I got back from my morning side trip to Polignano a Mare in time to do some stuff in Bari. I just didn’t know what. My guidebook didn’t offer many more suggestions as to what to do here.
There were a couple of guidebook-recommended sights I hadn’t seen, Museo del Succorpo della Cattedrale and the Teatro Margherita, but I wasn’t particularly optimistic that I’d be able to get into either of them today.
I thought the museum was a long shot. It’s inside the Bari Cathedral and the museum wasn’t open during the one in four attempts when I was successful at getting into the cathedral. My guidebook said the museum in the cathedral should have been open up until 4:00 pm on Mondays. Today is Monday.
My guidebook had given me wrong information about the opening times of the sanctuary and crypt of the Cathedral. I relied on that information previously, but, thrice burned, four times shy. So I hunted down other sources on the internet. Some confirmed the information in the guidebook (it’s possible they were derivative sources). Others said, nope, the museum closes at 1:00 pm on Mondays.
Throwing up my hands at the conflicting information, I walked to the cathedral to check it out. The doors were shut tight. The museum entrance is inside the cathedral, or so I was led to believe, so if I couldn’t get into the Cathedral, I couldn’t get into the museum.
Just to make sure, I walked around the whole cathedral looking for another entrance, but couldn’t find an open one. Curses, foiled again. So, in this case, my ambient pessimism was justified.
If this had been a normal cathedral museum of crucifixes, monstrances, candleholders, priests’ garb, and the like, I wouldn’t have cared. I’ve seen enough of those. But my guidebook said that the museum is below the cathedral and shows excavations that revealed remnants from an ancient Christian basilica and a number of Roman ruins on the site, predating the cathedral. I would have liked to have seen that.
Teatro Margherita
As I said, the other remaining sight listed in my guidebook is Teatro Margherita. In my first journal entry from Bari, I posted a picture of it in a collage of pictures of a few Bari buildings. I’ve posted another picture of it at the top of this post, one I took fresh today, so you can get a better look at it.
Teatro Margherita is a large, beautiful, historic theatre built between 1912 and 1914. It was restored in 2018 and now houses travelling art and photography shows.
My guidebook suggests checking to see if there are any shows on so that, if there are, I could go inside and see the restored interior.
I tried searching the internet for a Teatro Margherita website, but couldn’t find one. Nor could I find anything telling me if anything is on now. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough. Some readers might find something and post it in the comments below. A fat lot of good that will do me now.
Teatro Margherita isn’t far from the cathedral, so after my failure at the museum, I walked over.
Indeed there was an exhibit on. And, much to my surprise, it was open today, a Monday. A lot of museums and galleries close on Mondays, particularly if anyone tells them I’m coming. I guess no one snitched on me.
I bought a ticket from the very nice ticket seller and went inside.
I say the “very nice” ticket seller because, when I asked for a ticket, he asked me in somewhat broken English, “You’re not over 65, are you?” He expressed disbelief when I told him I was 71, but he sold me a ticket for the €7.50 seniors price rather than the normal price of €10 anyway, despite claiming surprise that I’m as old as I said I am. Then again, he didn’t ask for ID, so maybe he was just being nice. Like I said, a very nice ticket seller.
The show was a small exhibit of the photography of Elliott Erwitt. Erwitt was born to Russian immigrants in Paris in 1928. He spent a lot of his childhood in Milan, but at age 11 he and his parents moved to the United States, first to New York, then to California. He spent his working life as a photographer based back in New York, but took photographs in various places around the world. He died in 2023.
Almost all of the photographs in the exhibit at the Teatro Margherita were in black & white. Some were of famous people, such as Marilyn Monroe, Richard Nixon with Leonid Brezhnev, and John F. Kennedy (not paired with Monroe). But a lot were of ordinary people, evocative in the emotion the photographs expressed.
The space also displayed a short video on continuous loop. It seemed to be an interview with Erwitt with the interviewer cut out. In it, he discusses his work and his photography style and philosophy. The audio is in English with Italian subtitles.
But, of course, I didn’t go into Teatro Margherita to see photography or listen to the late Erwitt. I went into see the theatre.
Today, it’s stripped of all of its seating. The floor is entirely flat, with no raking for seats whatsoever. The old decorations on a domed ceiling in the section where the Elliott Erwitt show was are still there, although faded. The walls of that area were obscured by the panels on which the photographs were mounted.
From what I could see, I’m guessing the Teatro Margherita was a very elegant, grand theatre in its day. I posted a couple of pictures of the interior here.
After leaving the Teatro Margherita, I went back to the nearby Bari old town and wandered around. (I say back to not just because I’d been there at one point on every one of my previous days here, but because the cathedral is in the old town so I was already there today too.)
Bari Old Town
I love the old town and its mishmash of narrow old streets, and their old-world buildings. To my tastes, it’s the best part of Bari and wandering around it aimlessly is the best activity here. That’s not to put down the other activities and sites. I just think wandering in the old town is the best.
In the old town, I went back to the orecchiette street. I think there might have been a one or two more orecchiette women out making and selling their pastas than there were when I went there yesterday. They are, I now know, iconic and part of the very flavour of Bari, both literally and metaphorically.
After a lot of wandering, and one gelato, it was time to head back to my hotel and start winding down my stay in Bari, and this trip.
I have a ticket on an 8:45 a.m. train from here to Rome. It’s going to be a push for me to overcome my usual morning lethargy to make the train, but I’m confident I can. And I should have enough time to do some journal-entry-worthy stuff in Rome tomorrow afternoon.
I fly back home the next day.
Bari Summary
If all I wanted to see was Bari, two nights—one day, plus whatever time I had on the travel days on either end of my Bari visit—would have been sufficient.
I don’t want to mislead you. Bari has some very fine bits to it. I’ve already gushed over the old town, so take that as given. I also liked St. Nick’s basilica and the cathedral when I finally got to see it. And the castle is impressive.
The seaside is pleasant, but not as grand or dramatic as elsewhere, including elsewhere I’ve been on this trip. It’s pleasing, and worth taking a stroll along if you’ve got spare time here, but not in itself reason to come to Bari.
Teatro Margherita is nice enough. And I’m glad I took a gander, but the quality of my life wouldn’t have been diminished much if I missed it.
All of that sounds like a lot to do in Bari and it is. But if you limit yourself to the wow and near-wow sights, a day and a half is plenty.
But then you wouldn’t have time to do the half-day side trips I did while I was here—Alberobello, Trani, and Polignano a Mare. I loved all of them. And they are all easily doable by public transit—bus for Alberobello, train for the other two. So you don’t have to find a group tour to them, which can be scarce outside of the high season, or rent a car.
You can’t reasonably combine a couple of those in a single day if you use public transit. There aren’t any two of them that join up in a straight line starting in Bari. You’d have to go to one then return to Bari to get a train or bus to one of the others. That’s not reasonable to do in a day and still leave enough time to adequately experience each place.
That having been said, if you rent a car so you can plot your own route rather than depending on train and bus routes, you could probably see a couple in a day.
And if you travel in the high season, when group tours are more plentiful, or if you travel with enough people that the tour operator will run the tour just for your group, then that might be an option.
And if you don’t mind paying for a private tour, plenty of locals and local companies offer those. (I usually mind.)
All of that is a long way of saying that if I planned the trip knowing what know now I’d likely book at least four nights again, but only so I could take advantage of the side trips.
And if I did more research I’d probably find more side trips out of Bari that are worth a visit but that I didn’t get to on this trip.
The world is filled with beautiful, interesting, and exciting places, sometimes all three in one place. Unfortunately, time and money are finite. I won’t live long enough or have enough money to see everything worth seeing. So four nights in Bari was probably enough.
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