Oh the Places We've Been

The next week+ saw a whirlwind of activity. Because we had already been to this region last year, many of the most interesting sites were repeats for us. Other cities were essentially one hit wonders where we visited a particular church or feature. Several of them stood out and I will blog about them individually later. For now, what follows is a quick overview of Puglia and surroundings in southern Italy.

We spent two nights in downtown Matera. You might remember this as the setting of the cave dwellings which had been inhabited for 6000 years. We stayed in a boutique hotel in a cave last year. In addition to houses, they carved other buildings out of the rock, including this church under what is now the main square of the city.

Notice the stone carved to look like ceiling beams. The Sassi of Matera are yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site. Next we went to Metaponto, to a different set of ruins near where Pythagoras had his school.

The ruins weren’t all that interesting, but I did catch a really cool picture of the clouds as it was about to rain on us.

Next up was Kalimera. The students were there for an activity on Grico, a unique language derived from ancient Greek and spoken only there. The language was nearly annihilated by the Italian government from the 1950’s on as they strove to unify the language of the country, but it is now making a resurgence. The students were able to find and speak with a few original native speakers. It didn’t have much to offer the rest of us other than a bunch of gnarly old olive trees which were quite evocative.

On the same day we visited another church with important paintings in Galatina.

Otranto had a church with somewhat crude stone mosaic floors as well as the skeletons of hundreds of people martyred in 1480.

As one of his final acts, Pope Bebedict the 16^th set them on their pathway to sainthood. That process is expected to be finalized by Pope Francis in the coming days.

Lecce had the remains of an ancient Roman amphitheater.

Locorotondo brought us back to the land of the trulli, the circular, stone-roofed buildings barely visible over Amy’s shoulder in the background of this picture. We also went back to Alberobello, another UNESCO World Heritage Site.

At Trani we visited yet another cathedral, this one right on the water.

We also visited Molfetta which found us in, you guessed it, another church.

This one had a little piece of what is purported to be Santa Lucia.

She had hers eyes gouged out as part of her martyrdom. Pieces of her are scattered all over Europe, but I can find no mention of any of her being in Molfetta even though that is what the container suggests. I’ve blogged before about the Catholic obsession with preserving their saints and divvying them up between various churches. I find it both fascinating and puzzling.