Bari Cathedral

Start with the stone. Put your palm against the wall, and you will feel limestone that is cool, pale, and slightly rough, polished in places by centuries of passing shoulders. Around you, the narrow lanes of Bari Vecchia, the old town, fold in on themselves. You may hear a scooter, a shutter rolling up, a grandmother calling from a balcony. Then the lane opens, and this broad, calm facade rises in front of you. This is the Cathedral of Saint Sabinus, the mother church of Bari.

Many visitors come to Bari for its other great church, the Basilica of Saint Nicholas, a few minutes' walk away. That basilica belongs to the sailors and the pilgrims. This cathedral belongs to the bishops and to the city itself. The two buildings are close relatives in style. They are built from the same white stone, in the same southern Italian spirit. But they hold different stories, and this one is often quieter, which is part of its charm.

The style you are looking at is called Apulian Romanesque. Romanesque is the style of European churches before the Gothic age — heavy walls, round arches, and a feeling of solid weight. Here in Apulia, the heel of Italy's boot, builders gave it their own accent. They used local limestone that glows almost gold at sunset. They added fine carving, blind arches along the walls, and decoration that borrows from Byzantine, Norman, and even Islamic traditions.

The church you see is not the first on this spot. An earlier cathedral stood here under Byzantine rule. In 1156, the Norman king William the First, remembered as William the Bad, punished the rebellious city and had much of Bari torn down. The old cathedral fell with it. The rebuilding began in the decades that followed, and work continued into the thirteenth century. The finished church was consecrated in 1292.

Now look up at the centre of the facade, at the great round rose window. Take a moment with it, because the frame around it is not simple ornament. The carvers filled it with strange creatures — monsters, beasts, and grotesque figures that seem to crawl around the circle. In medieval thinking, such figures often stood guard at the edge of the sacred, keeping evil outside. Find one face and follow it. Some of them look almost amused.

Here is the first detail that many visitors miss. Around the summer solstice, sunlight passes through this rose window and throws its pattern onto the floor of the nave. In some years, the light falls on a rose design set into the pavement, as if the window and the floor were made for each other. Local people gather for the moment. Whether the medieval builders planned it exactly is still discussed, but the effect is real.

Step inside, and the first thing you may notice is the restraint. The space is tall and bare, with columns and round arches leading your eye toward the altar. It was not always this way. In the eighteenth century, the interior was dressed in Baroque decoration — the ornate, curving, gilded style of that era. In the twentieth century, restorers removed most of it to recover the medieval church underneath. What you see now is that recovered plainness.

Walk slowly down the nave and listen. Footsteps carry. Voices soften without being asked. The columns are not all identical, and some may have been reused from older buildings, a common practice in medieval Apulia. Notice how the light enters from high windows and settles on the stone in pale bands. On a bright Bari afternoon, the contrast between the hot street outside and this cool interior can feel almost physical.

Now find the stairs down to the crypt. This is the heart of the cathedral for many local people. Here lie the relics of Saint Sabinus, a bishop of nearby Canosa in the sixth century. His remains were brought to Bari in the ninth century, and the cathedral took his name. The crypt has its own low ceiling, its own columns, and a hushed, close atmosphere that feels very different from the nave above.

In the crypt you will also find a revered icon of the Virgin Mary, known as the Madonna Odegitria. The name comes from Greek and means, roughly, she who shows the way. According to a popular tradition, monks fleeing persecution in Constantinople brought the original image to Bari by sea in the eighth century. That is legend rather than documented history. The icon venerated today is a later work, but the devotion to it is very much alive.

Here is the second surprise. Beneath the cathedral floor, excavations uncovered the remains of earlier churches, including early Christian mosaic floors. Those patterns of small coloured stones were laid long before the Romanesque walls around you existed. When parts of this underground area are open, you can look down through layers of the city's past. It is a reminder that a sacred site in an old Mediterranean city is rarely built once. It is built again and again.

Before you leave, walk around the outside of the building. Beside the cathedral stands a round structure locals call the Trulla. It was once a baptistery, a separate building for baptisms, and it later became the sacristy. Look also at the bell tower. It rises above the rooftops of the old town and can be seen from many lanes nearby. Nearby, the diocesan museum keeps treasures of the cathedral, including a famous illuminated medieval scroll called the Exultet.

Now come back to the square and turn to face the facade once more. The stone that looked white in the morning may be honey-coloured now, or grey in the shade. Children may be kicking a ball against a wall, and someone may be hanging laundry above your head. The cathedral has watched these lanes for more than seven centuries. As you walk away, look back once at the rose window. Its monsters are still on guard.