Thirteen kilometres down the coast from Barletta, TRANI is a very different kind of place, with a cosmopolitan air not found in any of the other towns nearby. One of the most important medieval Italian ports, it was a prosperous trading centre with a large mercantile and Jewish community, during the Middle Ages rivalling Bari as a commercial port and in the fourteenth century powerful enough to take on the domineering Venetians.

Twentieth-century Trani is still a prosperous place, its elegant buildings spruce and smart. Centrepiece of the town is the cream-coloured eleventh-century Duomo (daily 8.30am-noon & 3-6pm), overlooking the sea on a large open piazza at the edge of the old town. Dedicated to San Nicola Pellegrino, it consists of no fewer than three churches, stacked on top of each other like an inverted wedding cake - the facade austere but lightened by a pretty rose window. The interior is slowly being restored to its original Norman state, the stark nave displaying a timbered ceiling, while near the presbytery fragments of a twelfth-century mosaic have been uncovered. Below the vaulted crypt is the earlier church of Santa Maria della Scala, whose marble columns are Roman, while further down the Ipogeo di San Leucio is an early Christian underground chamber dating from the sixth century. Back outside, the Castello (Mon-Sat 9.30am-12.30pm, Sun 9am-7.30pm; L4000/?2.06) is visible from Piazza Duomo, recently restored and re-opened to the public after years of service as a prison. A wander through the adjacent streets gives an impression of the medieval city, not least in the names that echo the town's mercantile and Jewish origins - Via Sinagoga, Via Doge Vecchia and Via Cambio ("Street of the Moneychangers"). The Palazzo Caccetta on Via Ognissanti is a rare example of fifteenth-century Gothic architecture; the Chiesa di Ognissanti , close by, was a twelfth-century chapel of the Knights Templar, once part of a hospital for injured Crusaders. Sadly, it's unlikely to be open, but if you hang around someone may appear with a key.