Saturday October 8th Castel del Monte 10
Aqua Salsa is a B&B just outside of Agnone, www.aquasalsa.it and it was basically a mini apartment. There was one bedroom with a queen bed, another with a queen and 2 bunk beds, and a sitting room with a kitchenette. The bathroom was very nice, and I can see the backyard being a great place to sit and drink a glass of wine in the summertime. Armando, the son of the owners knows all of the history of Agnone and was happy to give us a tour in the morning. I want to be this guy when I grow up. Everywhere we went people greeted him, he got us in a couple of “closed” places, and was an all around nice fellow. He took us around to the area of town that was at one time Venetian and showed us a peculiarity. The doorways of the Venentian Botegas have this little right-angled kick out in the bottom corner, but only one. There is one doorway that had two of them, and over the door in an old form of Italian is carved by the builder “Don’t look at me A@#$*($, the owner wanted it this way!” Pretty funny. Agnone which is a fairly small place, has 25 churches. Armando told us that there used to be frequent earthquakes in this area, and much of the town would be destroyed, and everytime they rebuilt it they would build a new church. He showed us one that had been rebuilt, and then many years later was struck by lightning. The part of the facade that was blown off revealed an ancient fresco of the Madonna underneath. Kind of crazy that it blew up a 3 foot square section of rocks and left did nothing at all to what was underneath, kind of makes you go hmmm? Armando’s clout got us behind the ropes at the Maranelli bell foundry. This place is the last bell foundry in Europe, and they have been making bells for 1000 years. Every time you hear a bell toll in Italy there is a 99% chance that it came from here. They even made the bell that the Pope rang to open the Jubilee in front of the Vatican in 2000.
This unexpected tour put us behind schedule, so we had to bolt to get down to the Puglia region by the afternoon. Our first stop was in Barletta. We were in search of the 16 foot tall bronze statue of a Roman emperor. It was stolen from Constantinople by the Venetians in the 4th century along with the 4 horses that sit atop St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. This stature was shipwrecked and washed ashore at Barletta nearly 1000 years later. It sits in front of a church that apparently Richard the Lion Heart had a hand in during the Crusades. Not really much else to see in Barletta, but the statue is one of the largest Bronze ones in existence, so it’s worth the short stop if you are in the area.
The next short stop in the area is outside of the town called Andria. Castel del Monte is absolutely incredible, it sits solitary on the one hill in the middle of a plain. Dominating is an understatement. It is octagonal in shape but then each corner had it’s own octagonal tower. The almost white stone with the dark clouds of the incoming storm as the backdrop was really beautiful. Miramare was the nicest residence we’ve seen, but Castel del Monte is by far the greatest castle that we’ve taken in. You couldn’t go up the road with motorized vehicles, but we waited until everyone left and did a little rogue filming. About 2 minutes late the lightning started, and we decided to cut out. The area that we are staying in tonight deserves a great description, and since we are rolling in after dark I’ll save it for tomorrow.