Canusium, city of Princes, Emperors and Bishops.
Founded, according to the legend, by the Homeric hero Diomede, Canusium was, among the most important of Daunia native centres before and of Apulia then. The man's traces on its fertile earths, situated between the last Iayers of the Murge and the river Ofanto, go up again to the Neolithic (600O-3000 b.C.) and grow in the age of Metals. In the XII sec. b.C. the whole region is characterized by the presence of a new population, the Illiris, that will  take the name of 'Dauni" in northern Puglia region. In the VIII- VII sec. b.C. the archaic inhabited area of Toppicelli develops, on the Ofanto plain, with aristocratic buildings and graves rich in outfits, belonging to the emergent class of the so-cal/ed ones 'princes " of Daunia. Active commercial and ceramic industry centre suffers the influence of the Hellenic culture and during the IV sec. b.C.  the city assumes, as urbanistic model, the Greek polis. Under the guideofhis 'princes" it becomes in the 318 a.C. allied city of Rome, also welcoming the Romans after the defeat of Annibale in the 216 a. C. to Canne, small village of iis vast territory. Roman Municipium fromthe 88 a.C., centre of manufacturing industries of valuable wool, the city of the "emperors" enumerates a series of urbanistic interventions according to the Roman model, among which detach the street Traiana in 109 A.D. and the aqueduct of Erode Attico in 141. 11Ie emperor Antonino Pio raises it to the rank of colony with the name Aurelia Augusta Pia Canusium. In the end of the III sec. it becomes chief town of the province Apulia et Calabria. From the IV it is centre of the most important diocese in Apulia. 11Ie city of the bishopsl, with a great Episcopal district and superb Places of cult, reach its apex under S. Sabino Episcopate (514 -566). Centre of gastaldo in Longobard age between VII and VIII sec., it suffers in the fol/owing century different devastations to work of the Saracens. It repurchases a certain importance between Xl and XlI sec. with the Norman ones, thankY to the particular interestshown by the prince Boemondo of Altavilla but, after the Swabians, an inexorable decadence begins, extended since the XV sec., under numerous feudatories; Orsini Del Balzo, Grimaldi Di Monaco.

 

 

 

 

 

The Cathedral.
The cathedral of Canosa has very ancient origins, perhaps identifìable with the pre-existence of a palaechristian building. The medieval building; stilllegible after the nineteenth-century ampl!/ìcation, introduces with a Latin cross plant, three aisles and five domes. Characteristics that, also belonging to a /a1ge extent to ìts rebuildìlg ìn Longobard age during the dukedom of Arechì n (V1II sec. AD), when ìt was devoted to the SS. Giovannì and Paul, unequìvocally recal/ basilìcas of Costantìnopolì. The buildìng appears therefore ìn unstable balance among two worlds: the Longobard west and the Byzantìne east. The first of August of the year 800 AD the bishop Pìetro Grimoa/do here trasfered;.from the ancient basilìca of S. Pìetro, the relics ofthe saìnt bishop Sabino, to which the church was definitely devoted .from the Norman ones and from the pope Pasquale n ìn 1102. In 1118 the church got the important tìtle of Palatìne Basilìca of the Norman ones. To ìts inside precious e/ements coming from buildìngs of the Canusium of Roman-imperial age: 6 monolithìc and monumental columns ìn ancìent green marble, Corinthian-Asian and Corinthian-westem capìtals, marbles. And it stìl/ turns us to the great past of the city when had been decided to redraw the new fat;ade on the model of the hypogeum Lagrasta n that it had been recavered around half of the the centW)( In the crypt, situated below the presbyte among marbles, columns of reemploy, Corinthian-Asian and Corinthìan-medieval capitals, an epigraph remembers the translation of the corpus Beatì Sabini. In unstable balance between Norman West and Is/amìc East there are the two extraordinary Romanesque scu/ptures of the Xl sec. : the pu/pit of Acceptus (1050 ca) and the Episcopa/ Cattedra of Romualdus, commissioned by the bishop Ursone (1078- 1089). Abovea/1 this /astpostpones us to the Fastis ofthe thrones ofthe Saracen emirs: the monumental structure, decorated with eagles, leonine masks, snouts and sphìnxes, are supported by two extraordinary elephants. ,.