The southeastern province of Puglia “feels a world away from the more familiar landscapes of central Italy”. Its historic buildings are whitewashed, for instance, a tendency perhaps dating from its centuries under Greek-Byzantine rule. But I went in search of a different aspect of its heritage, said William Dalrymple in the Financial Times – the extraordinary legacy of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and his Arab subjects.
A brilliant, freethinking “polymath” known as “Stupor mundi” or Wonder of the World, Frederick ruled over a swathe of Europe in the early 13th century, stretching from Sicily to the Baltic. But it seems he was particularly keen on Puglia, and especially on the large home he built for himself here – the Castel del Monte, “the most flawless of all medieval European castles”.
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