ASIANOVERLAND.NET WINTER EUROPEAN DAY 15/188:  BARI TO BRINDISI, ITALY

“DAY 15, 26/12/80 BOXING DAY BRINDISI

At last, some bloody “Rock and Roll!!”

Brindisi wharves make great dance floors.”

Brindisi is at the heel of the foot of Italy, and is the boarding place for ferries across the Adriatic Sea to the Greek island of Corfu.

Brindisi archaeologists have uncovered a Bronze Age village (16th century BC) where a group of huts, protected by an embankment of stones, yielded fragments of Mycenaean pottery.  The necropolis of Tor Pisana south of the old town of Brindisi, contains Corinthian jars from the first half of the 7th century BC. Brindisi certainly had strong business relationships with the opposite side of the Adriatic and the Greek populations of the Aegean Sea.

Brindisi evaded Roman expansion until it was conquered by the Romans in 267 BC, became a Latin colony and a major centre of Roman naval power and maritime trade. The local inhabitants received Roman citizenship, and Brindisi was made a free port until a siege conducted by Caesar in 49 BC, part of Caesar's Civil War and was again attacked in 42 and 40 BC.

Under the Romans, Brindisi was a large city with 100,000 inhabitants, an active port, the chief point of embarkation for Greece and the East. It was connected with Rome by the Via Appia.

Later Brindisi was conquered by Germanic Goths, and reconquered by the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century AD. In 674 Brindisi was destroyed by the Lombards, but it’s natural harbor meant that the city was soon rebuilt.

In 1070, Brindisi was conquered by the Normans, became part of the Duchy of Apulia. From 1132, Brindisi recovered some of its past splendour during the period of the Crusades, when it regained the Episcopal See, saw the construction of the new cathedral and a castle with an important new arsenal, and became a privileged port for the Holy Land. Emperor Frederick II, the heir to the crown of Jerusalem, started from the port of Brindisi in 1227 for the Sixth Crusade. Frederick II erected a castle, with huge round towers, to guard the inner harbour; and it later became a convict prison.

Brindisi for a short while was ruled by Venice, but was soon reconquered by Spain. A plague devastated Brindisi in 1348; it was plundered in 1352 and 1383; and an earthquake struck the city in 1456.

Brindisi fell to Austrian rule in 1707–1734.

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