Read Online An Armchair Traveller's History of Apulia by Desmond Seward, Susan Mountgarret - Free Book Online

just a day’s ride from Andria, in one of sixteenth century Italy’s most notorious crimes of passion. He was conducting an affair with the beautiful but neglected Donna Maria d’Avalos, wife of the homosexual Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, famous for his eerie motets and madrigals. Re-turning to Venosa unexpectedly from a hunting trip, Gesualdo was infuriated by the flagrant affront to his honour. He broke down the door of the bed-chamber and killed the pair as they lay in bed, shooting the duke with an arquebus, then finishing him off with a halberd, before stabbing Donna Maria repeatedly with a stiletto. Despite the Carafa family’s fury, he escaped scot-free – at this date a full scale military campaign would have been needed to bring an Apulian magnate to justice.
    Just outside Andria is the celebrated shrine of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. In 1576 a carpenter from the city, Giannantonio Tucchio, saw the Virgin in a dream, who told him to go to a cave in a ravine and light a candle before her image. An old man, he was nervous about visiting such a desolate place, but after she appeared twice more, went with a young friend, the lawyer Annibale Palombino. They found a picture on a wall and left a lamp burning before it. When they returned a week later, they found the lamp still burning, miraculously refilled with overflowing oil. Then Palombino’s mare went lame; every remedy failing, he tried the lamp oil and she was immediately healed. After this, humans began to be cured of diseases and pilgrims came flocking. In 1617 a magnificent Baroque church and a Benedictine monastery were built over the grotto by the great architect Cosimo Fanzago. A tablet records that in 1859 King Ferdinand II, very much at one with his subjects in matters of religion, came here and prayed for a cure. The shrine is now served by friars, crowds still descending the fifty-two steps into the grotto to pray before an ancient fresco on the wall of what was once a Byzantine cave chapel.
    Ettore Carafa, Count of Ruvo and heir to the duchy of Andria, can be seen either as a patriot or as a quisling. Visiting Paris during the French Revolution, he became a fanatical revolutionary, wearing a tri-coloured waistcoat and distributing copies of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” when he went home. As soon as the Neapolitan Republic was proclaimed, he raised a troop of like-minded volunteers to help the French subdue Apulia. In March 1799 he led his men in the storming of Andria, his birthplace. Its citizens, who had erected an enormous crucifix in the main square to protect them, fought desperately, pouring boiling oil from their windows. The besiegers put the city to the sword, and by Carafa’s own account the casualties on both sides amounted to 4,000. The usual looting took place; later a dragoon was arrested in Barletta nearby for trying to sell the dress of Andria’s statue of the Madonna del Carmine. Ironically, after being captured and condemned to death, Carafa, that enemy of privilege, demanded to be beheaded instead of hanged, as was his privilege as a noble; he also insisted on dying face upward. The King commented, “so the little duke has gone on playing the hard man [ guapo ] till the very end.” The request was granted, Ettore’s head being removed with a saw in place of the customary axe.
    The Carafa palace still stands at Andria, a huge dilapidated building of dingy brick. During the nineteenth century it was re-furbished by the Spagnoletti, formerly the ducal stewards, who had bought out their masters; eventually they were to rank among Apulia’s biggest landowners and wine-producers, acquiring a papal title. They have long since deserted this forlorn barrack.
    The dying King Ferdinand II stayed at Andria in January 1859, apparently in the Carafa palace. He was on his way to Bari, inspecting Apulia for the last time, and came here to see the San Ferdinando agricultural colony. Very much a benevolent despot, the king had