Puglia's most beautiful small port — a Norman Romanesque cathedral built directly over the Adriatic, rose wines, and one of Italy's finest fishing harbours
Trani sits on the Adriatic coast of northern Puglia, 45km north of Bari, and contains what many consider the most perfectly situated cathedral in Italy: the Cattedrale di San Nicola Pellegrino (1099–1143) stands on a promontory of white limestone rock jutting into the sea, its three-storey Romanesque façade catching the first and last light of every day in a colour the locals call 'Trani gold'. The port is a working fishing harbour lined with white-cube palazzi and ringed by palm trees; the wine is Nero di Troia (a deeply tannic, dark-fruited red that's being rediscovered after decades of ano…
Trani was a major Crusader embarkation port in the 11th–13th centuries — the cathedral was built in 1097 to receive the relics of Saint Nicholas the Pilgrim, a Greek hermit who wandered through the city repeating 'Kyrie Eleison' and died here in 1094. Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II held court in Trani and promulgated his legal code (the Constitutions of Melfi, 1231) partly from the city's castle. The Jewish community, expelled in 1541 under Spanish rule, left a remarkable architectural legacy — at its peak it was one of the largest and wealthiest Jewish communities in southern Italy.