10 Iconic Buildings to Explore in Apulia

The castle of Otranto is the fortress of the homonymous city located in Puglia, in the province of Lecce. The castle, which gave its name to the first Gothic novel in history, is closely related to the city walls with which it forms a single defensive apparatus. The current appearance of the fort is in fact due to Spanish Viceroys, who made it a real masterpiece of military architecture: extraordinary defense works were implemented in 1535 by Don Pedro of Toledo.

Castel del Monte, located in the municipality of Andria, rises on a rocky hill dominating the surrounding countryside of the Murgia region in southern Italy near the Adriatic Sea. A unique piece of medieval architecture, it was completed in 1240. Because of its relatively small size, it was once considered to be no more than a "hunting lodge", but scholars now believe it originally had a curtain wall and did serve as a citadel.

The Aragonese Castle, also known as Castel Sant'Angelo, is the main fortification in Taranto and marks the boundary between the old and the new part of the town. The fortress was designed in the late 15th century by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, upon request of the Aragon King Ferdinand I of Naples, who wanted it for defensive purposes. it is one of the main attractions in this area which welcomes a lot of tourists.

The Norman-Swabian castle of Bari, a symbolic building of the city of Bari, is an imposing fortress that stands on the edge of the old city. Since December 2014, the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities has been managing it through the Puglia museum complex, which in December 2019 became the Regional Museum Directorate. The castle is surrounded by a moat on all sides, except the northern section, which was bordering the sea and can be accessed from the bridge and the gate on the southe

The castle of Gallipoli , almost completely surrounded by the sea, stands with its imposing mass at the eastern end of the island that is home to the ancient village. Probably built as early as the 11th century on pre-existing Roman fortifications, it was rebuilt in the 13th century in the Byzantine era. It was remodeled several times by the conquerors who followed one another over the centuries.

The castle of Lecce is located near the city center, more precisely a little further east of it, near Piazza Sant'Oronzo. It was first built in the Middle Ages, and was strengthened by Charles V in 1539, to a design by the architect Gian Giacomo dell’Acaya. Although it has undergone several rebuilds over the centuries, the structure preserves its original trapezoidal base with four massive arrowhead bastions on each corner. An internal courtyard separates two concentric buildings.

The Margherita Theater is one of the historic theaters of the city of Bari , reopened in December 2018 after a long restoration and converted into a museum of contemporary art . The Teatro Margherita was used as a theatre and cinema until 1979. It is used as a museum now.

The column of Sant'Oronzo, about 29 meters high, is located in piazza Sant'Oronzo in Lecce. On the top, it houses the statue of the patron saint made in Venice in 1739. The column was erected as a sign of gratitude to Sant'Oronzo, to whom the city attributed its preservation from the plague that spread in 1656 in the Kingdom of Naples. The monument was built using the collapsed drums of the marble stem of one of the two Roman columns that were placed at the end of the Via Appia in Brindisi.

The castle of Santo Stefano is an important coastal fortification located outside the city of Monopoli. Throughout the Middle Ages, it was an essential component of the complex and articulated Monopolitan defense system. it was built on a small peninsula extending between two inlets that form two small natural ports, namely the current Santo Stefano and Ghiacciolo beaches. With the presence of a well from which to draw groundwater, it was the seat of the Benedictine monastery.

The trullo ( ancient Greek τροῦλλος trûllos , " dome ") is a type of conical construction in traditional dry stone of central-southern Puglia . Trulli were generally built as temporary shelters in the countryside or permanent homes for farmers. Much of the agglomeration of Alberobello in the metropolitan city of Bari consists of trulli.