I spend a day scaring up the best there is to see in the Apulian port city of Brindisi
Brindisi is, and always has been, a ferry port. From the days when the Romans extended the Via Appia here from Rome through medieval knights leaving for the Crusades to modern sun-seekers on their way to the Greek Isles, Brindisi has been where you step off the end of the road and onto the high seas.Brindisi is the only Italian town where more road signs point to "Greece" than to anywhere in Italy. The passeggiata here is less an evening stroll than a backpacker parade of ferry-bound tourists killing time until their 10pm departure by restlessly marching up and down the main drag, their eyes sparkling with visions of Greek islands, their faces grimacing as they bite into what very well may be the worst pizza-by-the-slice this side of Naples.
There is little to see in Brindisi, but I was determined to find something to put in the guidebook I was writing at the time, anything to amuse the legions of folks who are stuck here daily, waiting to board the slow boat to Greece.
The end of the road for ancient Romans
Brindisi was settled in the 6th century BC by the Messapians (who dubbed it Brunda, or "stag's head," after the antlery shape of its branching harbor), and later became a Greek colony that evolved into the Latin port of Brindisium. But it didn't really boom until in the AD 2nd century, when the Via Appia was finished.
The Appian Way is one of Europe's oldest highways, famous for that mass crucifixion scene at the end of Spartacus and for the catacombs that line the road at the Rome end. Though most of it is now clad in asphalt, stretches of the Via Appia's worn ancient paving stones are still preserved all along its route—terribly scenic, but hell to ride a bike over; trust me. This road was once pounded by the Roman legions off to conquer, patrol, and defend the Empire. But first they had to pass through Brindisi.
Brindisi is where Julius Caesar tried to hem in Pompey's ships in 49 BC, and where Octavian (later to become Augustus) made a famed but short-lived peace treaty with Marc Antony. Virgil traveled all the way to Greece to submit his manuscript for the nationalistic epic Aeneid to a campaigning Augustus, but fell ill along the way. The poet managed to make it as far as Brindisium to convalesce, but was dead within three days.
Though Virgil demanded on his deathbed that his manuscript be destroyed, Augustus overruled him—to the dismay of Latin students for millennia to come—edited out the bits he didn't like, and published it anyway (isn't that just like an emperor? Or a publisher?).
Another great Roman scribe, Horace, even dabbled in a bit of my trade when he penned his fifth Satire about a road trip here with his buddy Maecenas in 38 BC (during which he got a raging case of la turista from the water in Campagna: proof that some things in travel never change).
Sadly, little of this Roman history is evident anymore. I had read about a pair ancient Roman columns that marked the end of the Appian Way, towering over the short staircase leading down to the waterfront esplanade. When I got to the end of Via Colonna, the final stretch of the Appian Way, I was disappointed to find nothing but a pair of stumps.
One pillar had been struck by lightning and toppled in 1528. (Brindisi sold it to Lecce, which still uses it to prop up a statue of their patron saint on the main piazza.) The remaining column had been spirited away for restoration. Only their pedestals remained, marked with graffiti, behind a low fence. [Note: the column has since been returned to its pedestal, as you can see in the photograph at the very beginning of this page.]
Hoping to fare better with what's left of the Roman era in the free Museo Archeologico Provinciale, I jogged up and around the corner to Piazza del Duomo. After popping inside the 12th-century Cathedral (rebuilt in the 18th century, but with some original mosaics uncovered near the altar), I ducked under the impressive Portico dei Cavalieri Templari and took the stairs up to the museum.
The Appian Way is one of Europe's oldest highways, famous for that mass crucifixion scene at the end of Spartacus and for the catacombs that line the road at the Rome end. Though most of it is now clad in asphalt, stretches of the Via Appia's worn ancient paving stones are still preserved all along its route—terribly scenic, but hell to ride a bike over; trust me. This road was once pounded by the Roman legions off to conquer, patrol, and defend the Empire. But first they had to pass through Brindisi.
Brindisi is where Julius Caesar tried to hem in Pompey's ships in 49 BC, and where Octavian (later to become Augustus) made a famed but short-lived peace treaty with Marc Antony. Virgil traveled all the way to Greece to submit his manuscript for the nationalistic epic Aeneid to a campaigning Augustus, but fell ill along the way. The poet managed to make it as far as Brindisium to convalesce, but was dead within three days.
Though Virgil demanded on his deathbed that his manuscript be destroyed, Augustus overruled him—to the dismay of Latin students for millennia to come—edited out the bits he didn't like, and published it anyway (isn't that just like an emperor? Or a publisher?).
Another great Roman scribe, Horace, even dabbled in a bit of my trade when he penned his fifth Satire about a road trip here with his buddy Maecenas in 38 BC (during which he got a raging case of la turista from the water in Campagna: proof that some things in travel never change).
Sadly, little of this Roman history is evident anymore. I had read about a pair ancient Roman columns that marked the end of the Appian Way, towering over the short staircase leading down to the waterfront esplanade. When I got to the end of Via Colonna, the final stretch of the Appian Way, I was disappointed to find nothing but a pair of stumps.
One pillar had been struck by lightning and toppled in 1528. (Brindisi sold it to Lecce, which still uses it to prop up a statue of their patron saint on the main piazza.) The remaining column had been spirited away for restoration. Only their pedestals remained, marked with graffiti, behind a low fence. [Note: the column has since been returned to its pedestal, as you can see in the photograph at the very beginning of this page.]
Hoping to fare better with what's left of the Roman era in the free Museo Archeologico Provinciale, I jogged up and around the corner to Piazza del Duomo. After popping inside the 12th-century Cathedral (rebuilt in the 18th century, but with some original mosaics uncovered near the altar), I ducked under the impressive Portico dei Cavalieri Templari and took the stairs up to the museum.
Pretty disappointing.
It only takes about 15 minutes to peruse the modest collections, a fairly unremarkable hodgepodge of doodads from the Stone and Bronze Ages and Roman-era statues and trinkets. There is a pair of AD 1st-century dice, proving that some things about sailors never change, and they save the best for last with a series of fine 4th-century BC bronzes fished out of the sea nearby.
Frustrated by the lack of ancient artifacts in this famed Roman town, I decided to try my luck on relics of the early Middle Ages. That's when Brindisi boomed again with the papal legions of millennial crusaders, making the rounds of the alehouses while waiting to embark on the ships that would carry them over to "liberate" the Holy Land.
Cue the Crusades
First stop: The 11th-century Knights Templar church of San Giovanni al Sepolcro. The worn reliefs around the door were pretty cool, but there was a rusty padlock on the wooden door, and I couldn't find anyone with the key, so had no chance to peek at the 13th-century frescoes inside.The one good sightseeing tip I had wasn't even located in town, so I headed back to the train station to catch a bus. While I waited, I chatted with the staff of a cheerily-painted trailer who were handing out sightseeing and pamphlets and fliers with discount hotel and restaurant coupons aimed at convincing the backpacking students, who periodically pour out of the station doors, to spend at least one night here in town and spend money on something more than a ferry ticket and a slice of god-awful pizza from parlors lit by nudie-girl neon.
I hopped on bus 3D and ask the driver to let me off at a bend in the road 4km north of town where Santa Maria del Casale, Brindisi's one saving grace in terms of sightseeing, rises rather incongruously from the midst of the agribusiness flatlands. The 1322 pilgrimage-route church is Romanesque-becoming-Gothic, its facade clad in patterns of zig-zags and chessboards made from alternating tan and milky blue stones.
Knights on their way to the Crusades would stop here to pray before boarding their boats, and the frescoes inside—finally, something in Brindisi worth looking at!—were designed to bolster their courage. Colorful but often crudely executed, in styles ranging from static Byzantine to the more expressive Giottesque style that had become all the rage, these New Testament scenes were meant to remind the Crusaders what they were fighting for (on the right of the nave is a Madonna Surrounded by Knights) and what would happen to their eternal souls should their faith fail them (the gruesome Last Judgement filling the end wall).
On the way back into town, my bus conveniently paused for a minute right next to the Arabo-Norman Fontana Tancredi, built in 1192 by Tancred, the region's last Norman king. After praying at Santa Maria, so local legend goes, the nervous Christian soldiers stopped here to water their horses and steel their courage for the coming Crusade. I snapped a picture, but only at the last minute as the bus pulled away.
The problem was I was staring in the other direction, up the western antler of Brindisi's bay, where I could see the Norman-era Castello Svevo poking up from a headland in the harbor.
The castle's now under the aegis of the Italian Navy, and therefore closed to the public. I used to get indignant about this sort of thing, but eventually realized that there's something appropriate, even noble, about a centuries-old fortress still serving a military purpose. And besides, Brindisi has been a naval base from Rome's Second Punic War to the Allies' Great War.
Various popes personally saw off their Crusades from these docks (Pius II, humanist philosopher and great patron of the early Renaissance, died here while trying to drum up support for an aborted Crusade of his own), and even Mussolini launched the seafaring portions of his (belated) imperial campaigns against Ethiopia, Albania, and Greece from here.
These days, the only crusade on people's minds is finding a better beach.
No rest for the weary travel writer
Brindisi's modernized streets teem with legions of holiday-makers who were abandoning Italy for the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and the storied Greek isles.
At least, they had been teeming when I left for the church outside town. By the time I got back into Brindisi proper, the town was in full-blown riposo mode. Riposo in Brindisi is still observed as a religion, and everything but everything shuts down for a three- to four-hour stretch of mid afternoon. Shops are shuttered. Sheets of newspaper blow through the streets like urban tumbleweed. Even the fountains are turned off.
Every last local soul disappears behind doorways hung with strings of beads, with only the clink of forks on plates and thunk of glasses set on tables to hint that anyone is actually inside.
Of course, this doesn't account for all the visitors, who arrive in droves beginning early in the morning, only to discover, as I once did as a traveling student, that the ferries don't leave until around 9 or 10pm.
So they wait.
Most of the backpackers spend the afternoon like August dogs collapsed in the shade, draped across the benches around a fountain, or pigeonholed into shop doorways, snoozing, panting, and keeping a wary eye on the streets where few people but we nutty travel writers with schedules to keep and research to conduct are walking about.
In fact, when I arrived at the Hotel Europa, dripping sweat and slightly out of breath from the stairs, the slightly stooped Signora Natalina looked at me as if I were crazy after I delivered my "I-am-writing-a-guidebook" speech as asked me, "Yes, but what are you doing out in this heat?"
I shrugged sheepishly "It's my job." She shakes her head, beams wreathes of smiles around an ever-present cigarette clamped between her teeth, and proceeds to chat my ear off while she struggles to check in a favorite customer (a Brit who has been returning here since his World War II days) using the computer her son insisted a modern hotel needs.
Waiting for the ferry
Many of the travelers killing time around Brindisi weren't merely vacationers. A good percentage were Albanian, Turkish, or Greek immigrants (or, often more accurately, birds of passage) who spend most of the year working in Rome, Milan, Germany, Switzerland, or France to scrape together some hard currency.
With their vacation time, they flocking back to the homeland, entire family in tow, the women wrapped in black and white babushkas, shirtless boys in shorts, girls in dirty dresses, and men with their shirt sleeves rolled up.
Most of the backpackers embarked ferry baots at 10pm, armed with Eurail passes guaranteeing free passage, and a predilection for sleeping (again for free) out on the ferry decks.
Most of the Albanians and Turks and Greeks arrived in minivans, each stuffed with eight to ten people plus what appears to be all their worldly belongings stacked up around them and squoze into every corner of the vehicle.
Ship berths were already all booked up, and they wouldn't be able to make it out until tomorrow. By the time I was walking back through town after dinner—a classy joint named Pantagruele where I was introduced to a surprisingly succulent ostrich steak—the main street had become clogged with a perfectly motionless traffic jam, a minivan caravan.
Those extended families were attempting to sleep sitting up in their vehicles, jammed against one another. Every car door was open to try to catch what small breezes teased the high 90s heat. The scene was bathed in a combination of the searing chemical light of street lamps, the nudie-girl neon of pizza parlors, and the pale wash of the dirty tangerine slice of a moon, which looked like its about ready to give on the whole evening and drop out of the sky like an overripe fruit.
I climbed the stairs to my room at the Hotel Regina, flicked on the ceiling fan, and peeled off my sweat-soaked clothes to soak them in the sink (in this kind of heat, I have to do laundry every night).
I was happy, though, sitting on the bed and typing up the day's notes into my laptop, glad to have found at least a few diversions that might amuse ferry-bound readers who are stuck in Brindisi for the day.
The next year, they cut the whole section from the book.
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