Monday June 1, 2015

Photo: 910 Trani Cathedral on the left and the fortress on the right. The cathedral was founded at the end of the 11th century to hold the relics of a 19-year-old Greek Pilgrim called Nicola who died in Trani after being there only 15 days.

The old city of Manfredonia has some excellent walking tours with descriptions in English. We looked at a few major sites. The city was founded in 1256 and became an important trading center. Today it’s economy is based on fishing, agriculture and trade.

Quite by accident we found a small museum in a building called the Palazzo Santa Domenico. The building used to be a palace of a wealthy merchant in the oldest part of the old city. It appears to house some city offices now. It doesn’t attract tourists because you have to pass these official looking people and we were not certain what we would find or if we could enter. It was a lovely treat to find some of the artifacts from archeological exploration of the city. We were asked to sign the visitor’s log and they seemed impressed that Americans had visited.

The Swabian-Angevin-Aragonese Castle of Manfredonia was designed by King Manfred of Sicily who died in battle in 1266. In front of the castle is a memorial to fallen soldiers. While we were looking at it, a man came up to speak with us. He apparently could speak a little German but no English and we can’t speak German or Italian. He went away and returned with several other men, one of whom could speak some English. They wanted to tell us about this little museum we had just seen. They too were impressed that we had been there. Clearly it is something of considerable pride in Manfredonia.

We departed the marina at 1215 for another day of lovely sailing. The wind was lighter—max wind 14.3 knots and our max speed was 7.4 knots for the 31-mile trip to Trani.

We tied up at the marina at 1745 and went to find a café with Internet. The marina doesn’t have Internet and the showers are out of order. We plan to spend the day in Trani so we looked around enough to make a plan for tomorrow.