The best walks and hikes around Binetto

The Balsignano Monumental Complex is an ancient fortified medieval settlement. During your visit, you can visit this evocative archaeological and historical site, comprising a castle with double walls and two important churches: the Church of Santa Maria (with frescoes) and the Church of San Felice, the latter considered a masterpiece of Apulian Romanesque art with Byzantine influences. The complex dates back to the 10th-11th centuries and underwent various historical phases until its abandonment in the 16th century.

Impressive now abandoned complex built on terraces of "cut stones". There are stone fences for livestock and residential shelters. Very beautiful

Trulli - or trullo when you’re talking about just one dwelling - were initially built to provide temporary field shelters and storehouses. Over time they also became permanent dwellings for agricultural families and labourers of smallholdings. The simple traditional lime whitewash that decorates the trulli’s exterior complements the local geology and pastoral landscapes. To protect against the elements and balance the temperature all year round, the trulli walls are incredibly thick, made up of a double skin filled with rubble. Similarly, the doorways and windows are small. These iconic rural dwellings began appearing as early as the 14th century, and their popularity originated because of a 15th century decree that made urban settlers pay taxes to the crown under feudal rule. If the king’s inspectors came collecting, the villagers could easily demolish these inexpensive buildings into a pile of stones and hide in the forest, and then rebuild them once they’d gone.

The "Torre del marchese Arcamone" is a fortified two-storey farmhouse whose last phase is certainly from the modern age, which has on the ground floor rooms for stables, warehouses and an oil mill. But what is its history and why is the district called this way? In 1399 the king of Naples, Louis, ceded the barony of Bitetto together with the fief of Ceglie and Bari, for having fought bravely in a war near Taranto, to Marcello Arcamone. Since 1382, during the reign of Charles III, he had come to Puglia with his brother Lionello, who had been given the Lordship of Ceglie. The Arcamone family lived in Bitetto for a long time. In 1407 Pope Martin V transferred Bishop the son of Marcello, Carlo Arcamone, from his seat in Venafro to Bitetto. The farm had many changes of ownership and in 1806, already belonging to the Noja family of Mola, it was confiscated for the abolition of the feudal regime.

Bitetto ist known for the presence of the remains of Blessed Giacomo , a lay friar who died in the odor of sanctity, whose body has remained intact over the centuries. The main monument of the town, the church of San Michele Arcangelo is one of the purest examples of Apulian Romanesque . The epigraph near the portal reveals that the facade was built in 1335 by Mastro Lillo da Barletta on commission from Bishop Bonocore, who wanted to rebuild the city temple on the site of an older cathedral. Bitetto had in fact been a diocesan seat since the 11th century . Oriented according to ancient custom with the presbytery to the east, the church has a severe façade divided into three parts by pilasters and equipped with a large archivolted rose window . Of the three portals, the central one is characterized by a rich sculptural apparatus: two stone lions, crouched on mighty corbels, support columns with capitals with vegetal motifs that support a lunette with bas-reliefs of Christ and the twelve Apostles. The external jambs instead present scenes from the New Testament. The interior, which was heavily plastered in the eighteenth century and was restored to its original Romanesque style in 1959 , is divided into three naves by triple-order wall partitions, where the double-arched arches are surmounted by false matronei and higher up by single-lancet windows. The transept has three apses according to the stylistic features of Apulian Romanesque. The fourteenth-century body is flanked on both sides by two eighteenth-century chapels, that of Purgatory (on the left) and that of the Blessed Sacrament (on the right). Outside, the bell tower, also dating back to the eighteenth century, rests on the Romanesque façade with a typical gabled structure.

The gate owes its name to the underground cisterns used to collect rainwater. For a long time it was one of the main accesses to the old, fortified city, where most of the population lived until the early 18th century.

Gateway to the village of Bitetto

Rural church built by faithful, with dedication to the Holy Virgin, dated in 1759, the year of the encyclical Cum Primum published by the Pope Clement XIII in which the Pontiff severely admonishes all those Ecclesiastics who, eager for easy earnings, engage in commerce and thus degrade the dignity of their condition as clerics or priests. #babaciclistaurbano #historiaetfabulis #balsignano