Bari historical timeline

Bari has been the most important place on this coast for well over a thousand years, and its history is a sequence of rulers arriving by sea.

Barium and Byzantium

A Roman municipium called Barium, it mattered far more after Rome than during it. From the tenth century Bari was the seat of the catepan, the Byzantine governor of southern Italy, which made it effectively the capital of Greek Italy. The Normans took it in 1071 after a siege of nearly three years.

The theft of Saint Nicholas

In 1087 sixty-two Barese sailors went to Myra, in what is now Turkey, and removed the bones of Saint Nicholas from his tomb, bringing them back to Bari. A basilica was begun the same year to house them. The relics made the city a major pilgrimage destination, which it remains — particularly for Orthodox Christians, and especially Russians.

Destruction and a duchess

William I of Sicily razed Bari in 1156, sparing only the basilica. It recovered, and Frederick II rebuilt the castle in the 1230s. Later the duchy passed to Bona Sforza, Duchess of Bari and Queen of Poland, who died here in 1557 and is buried in the cathedral — a connection Polish visitors still come for.

The new town

In 1813 Joachim Murat, ruling Naples for his brother-in-law Napoleon, ordered a planned extension south of the old town. That grid is still the commercial centre.

1943

On 2 December 1943 a German air raid on the Allied-held port sank a US ship secretly carrying mustard gas. Around a thousand died and the true toll is still argued over; the cargo was classified for years afterwards.