Puglia Biking – Otranto

Posted on September 5, 2013 by WolfeStreetTravel

The penultimate city on the trip was Puglia’s very cool port city of Otranto. We biked over the next morning after our 50-mile ride down the Adriatic coast to check it out, then hustled back to the masseria to hang out for the rest of the day.

Quintessential Italy – a row of scooters in front of Otranto’s big castle
15th-century Aragonese castle with a now-dry moat
Unlike Ostuni, which was set back from the coast, Otranto’s a port town
Steps to nowhere
Castle courtyard
Very cool cardboard sculpture of a Vespa at an exhibition being held at the Castello Aragonese
The fortified city’s sea gate
Creepy cherubim
I.M. Pei-esque castle wall
Mural in the castle’s dungeon
Around town in Otranto
Otranto’s Cattredale dell’Annunziata
17th-century Gothic rose window on what was originally a 12th century Romanesque (much better than Gothic) cathedral
Ceiling’s cool, but . . .
. . . the floor’s the real show. A 12th-century mosaic of the tree of life
The good . . .
the bad . . .
. . . and the wacky.
The monk who did the floor over decades had never actually seen an elephant
The Turks raided the city in 1480 and massacred the bishop and 800 citizens
Their bones are in one of the cathedral’s chapels
The cattredale’s piazza
The coast is right around the corner
Definitely a great town to spend the morning.

Actual travel date: September 7, 2013

Categories: Biking, Italy, Puglia, Puglia, Italy | Tags: , | Leave a comment

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