Barletta tourist information

Barletta is a city and comune located in the north of Apulia in south eastern Italy. Its current population is 94,140.

It is famous for the Colossus of Barletta, a bronze statue, representing a Roman Emperor (perhaps Theodosius II). In 1503 it was the location of the disfida di Barletta ("Joust of Barletta"), a battle during which 13 Italian knights commanded by Ettore Fieramosca challenged and defeated an equal number of French knights who were at the time prisoners of war, in a joust held near Andria. The city at the time was fairly loosely besieged by French forces, and occupied by a Spanish army under the command of Gonzalo de Cordoba the 'Gran Capitan'. It is the location of the archaeological site of the town of Canne della Battaglia (in Latin Cannae). It flourished in the Roman period and then after a series of debilitating Saracen attacks, was finally destroyed by the Normans and then abandoned in the early Middle Ages. It is also near the location of the battlefield of the famous battle between Romans and the Carthaginians led by Hannibal. The city has one gold medal for military valour and another one for the civil valour, for its relatively feeble resistance to an incursion of German Fallschirmjaeger who destroyed the port in order to prevent its falling intact into the hands of the advancing British Eighth Army during World War II.

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