Terlizzi's triumphal float represents the symbol in which the whole community recognizes itself. It is a 22-meter-high festive machine with a wooden supporting structure and canvas covering, which every year parades through the main city arteries, pushed by the arms of more than fifty men and driven by four coxswains in traditional dress directed by a head coxswain who masterfully leads it through the traditional and spectacular curves of the city center.
It carries in triumph the icon of Our Lady of Sovereto and the statue of St. Michael, the main patron saints of the town, as well as a large number of children, seated on the steps leading from the "carretta" to the "throne" on which the sacred image of the Virgin is placed.
In Terlizzi, the tradition of the triumphal cart, attested by some documents from the 16th century, is intimately linked to the birth of the cult in honor of Our Lady of Sovereto. Its symbolism is imbued with content that refers back to the legend of the find: the image of the Virgin was found by the shepherd who, in an effort to free a stranded sheep, noticed the icon in an underground cavity. The shepherd was from Bitonto, while the icon was found in the Terlizzese countryside. Immediately the problem arose as to which of the two municipalities the icon should belong to. It was thus chosen to entrust the fate to the "judgment of God."
The Image was placed on a cart drawn by two oxen, one from Bitonto and one from Terlizzi. The latter prevailed, blinding the Bitonto ox with a horn. The cart thus arrived in Terlizzi constantly changing its appearance. In 1868 it took its final shape both in its supporting structure and in its architectural and decorative components, handed down to the present day, thanks to Michele De Napoli, a great neoclassical painter who became mayor of the town and designed a new festive machine.
The operational construction of the float was entrusted to set designer Raffaele Affaitati from Foggia. Since then the float has remained virtually unchanged in its stylistic components and continues to deeply excite on the first Sunday of August each year.
The recent recognition of "Terlizzi as the city of ceramics" exalts the centuries-old tradition of clay working, which in these districts in the heart of Apulia has been able to achieve art forms of unusual beauty. Terlizzi is also the city of extra-virgin olive oil and other agrifood delicacies, among which the "Mingo Tauro" florone, a candidate for IGP designation, stands out, and it is above all the "city of flowers," with the hundreds of companies operating in the area and in the district, all well attested on national and foreign markets by virtue of the excellent and much sought-after products: a true treasure of biodiversity.
But Terlizzi of "flowers" has many, and all to be discovered, in an emotional journey that tastes of the ancient and the modern, where modernity is under everyone's eyes and the ancient is well portrayed, until it is revived, in the pages offered by passionate scholars such as Don Gaetano Valente and Arch. Michele Gargano, accustomed to immersing themselves in the documentary papers as in the maze of alleys and paved widenings of the medieval village enclosed by the enclosure of the "stradone" overlooked by the elegant residences of the families who made the history of the city.
At the edge of the medieval settlement, one can admire the elegant mass of the neoclassical Co-Cathedral dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, built on the thirteenth-century Collegiate Church that bore the signature of Anseramo da Trani, whose refined portal set in the Church of the Rosary can still be admired. In continuity, as guarded by the tall bell tower with bulbiform termination of oriental type, is the Church of the Immaculate Conception. It houses, amidst stucco and ornamentation of a vexatious Baroque style, the sequence of canvases with stories from the Old Testament and the life of the Madonna painted by Domenico Antonio Carella.
But what literally takes your breath away is the celebrated Adoration of the Shepherds that Corrado Giaquinto painted around 1750. Just a stone's throw away is the Pinacoteca Civica, which houses in the same rooms of the artist's home the rich legacy of works (over a thousand) by Michele de Napoli (1808-1892). It leads to Terlizzi's main square, dominated by the stern bulk of the Norman Tower, a strategic work of defense, today the Clock Tower, crowned by the civil architecture, among which stands out the Palace of the city government in one with the Millico Theater, and religious, churches of St. Joachim and St. Lucy with the Monument to the Fallen in the center, the work of Giulio Cozzoli, without neglecting the memory of illustrious Terlizzians who fought for freedom and were slaughtered at the Fosse Ardeatine: Don Pietro Pappagallo and Gioacchino Gesmundo, whose memorial is in Largo La Ginestra.
The gaze down the Corso lingers on the imposing facade of Palazzo de Gemmis, with inventions of Vanvitellian flavor, and on the nearby church of Santa Maria la Nova, which was a hotbed of culture and theological knowledge of the Friars Minor Observant. It houses first-rate works of art, such as the Nativity (1540) by Giovan Girolamo Savoldo (1480c-1548) and the Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Francis of Assisi (1532-1533) by Giovanni Antonio de Sacchis, known as Pordenone (1483c-1539).
An authentic oasis of peace and spirituality, along the routes of the Francigena, the Borgo di Sovereto encloses and preserves, as a precious pearl, the shrine of the patron Virgin whose icon was found, according to ancient legends, by a shepherd in a cave. Ѐ the Marian effigy of the Theotòkos (Mother of God) that every year, in the ritual re-enactment of the mythical finding, crosses the main streets of the city hoisted on the mammoth "triumphal chariot" for the "major feast" during the first Sunday in August, sealing one of the most beautiful and exhilarating feasts one is given to witness in Apulia.
To visit: Co-cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel, Church of Santa Maria la Nova, Church of the Immaculate Conception, Church of the Rosary and Portal of Anseramo da Trani, Medieval Village, Norman Tower (or Clock Tower), Town Hall and "Millico" Theater, "Michele de Napoli" Art Gallery, Sanctuary and village of Sovereto, Sanctuary of Santa Maria di Cesano.
text by Franco di Palo / photos by Francesco De Chirico
