Troia, a symbolic city of the Francigena pilgrimage

The ancient coat of arms of Troia depicted a sow suckling seven piglets (in Italian troia means female pig). Charles V replaced it in 1536 with a golden amphora surmounted by a crown, from which five snakes dart, as a perpetual reminder of the cunning of its inhabitants.

Its origins are very ancient. Founded at the dawn of the 11th century, it incorporated within its walls a pre-existing city whose origins are lost in the mists of time.

Read: The City That Disappeared

Its history would begin in the Neolithic, to develop around the 8th century into a very advanced community on a commercial and spiritual level. From the 6th-5th century BC it becomes a flourishing and refined city that can be placed in the political and cultural horizon of Magna Graecia.

In epoca romana infine diventa la città di Aecae. Lo attestano gli scritti di Polibio, Strabone e Livio, i quali forniscono anche le prime notizie certe sulla storia della città. Nel 217, nei pressi di Aecae, sulla collina, si accampò Quinto Fabio Massimo per controllare da vicino i movimenti di Annibale ritiratosi a Vibinum (Bovino).Tra il III-IV sec. d.C divenne una diocesi. Fonti agiografiche e liturgiche attestano l’esistenza tra il IV-VI sec. di tre vescovi santi: Marco (patrono di Bovino), Eleuterio e Secondino (patroni di Troia).

Tradition attributes the destruction of Aecae to the expedition of Constans II to Italy in 663.

However, over the next four centuries something survived, so much so that at the dawn of the 11th century the area was full of farmhouses, churches and convents orbiting around two important monasteries, one Basilian, the other Benedictine.

Next to the ancient Aecae and as its natural extension, in 1019, the catapan Basilio Bojoannes rebuilt the city calling it, for reasons still unclear, with the name of Troia.

At the end of the 6th century, Daunia and the Sanctuary of San Michele in Monte Sant’Angelo began to be of interest to the Lombards. The great pilgrimages that passed through the city of Troia began and the first notation with the name of Francigena is found as an epithet of that Gualtiero Francigena, bishop of Troia, who in 1083 began the construction of the Church of Santa Maria which later became the famous Cathedral of Troia.

The cathedral of Troia, officially co-cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary Assumed into Heaven, is a typical example of Apulian Romanesque with Pisan-Byzantine and Muslim influences.

The church is a Latin cross building with important peculiarities and undoubted architectural interest, built between 1093 and 1125.

The church was built on the basis of a pre-existing Byzantine building and with reused materials, obtained from the previous city of Aecae.

The works for the construction of the cathedral were financed by Bishop William II. In 1119 the bronze door built by Oderisio da Benevento was placed, whose function, in addition to the stylistic completion of the facade, was to celebrate the glories of the bishop and his ability to mediate the relationships between the Holy See and the Norman barons, it is also decorated with dragons and masks, in a complex of intense classicism.

The rose window is indeed an example of excellent sculpture technique: it is composed of eleven columns (a symbolic number that recalls the number of Christ's disciples minus Judas, the traitor) that radiate from the center and are joined in a network of arches. The rose window, due to its particularly accurate workmanship, almost seems like embroidered lace, such is the grace of its composition. At its center is a relief sculpture of a serpent biting its tail, a symbol of eternity and resurrection.

Within the territory of Troia there are also other places of worship that are worth seeing, among these the Church of San Francesco, an absolute example of Baroque art and architecture. The church building was later expanded with the annexed convent by the friars of Montevergine in 1737, until it later occupied a significant area. The interior, quite sober in the stucco, is dominated by an almost blinding white color that characterizes the entire environment even more, and deserves to be seen with your own eyes.

In the historic center stands out the Basilica of San Basilio Magno, probably of early Christian origin. This church has a fairly massive masonry architecture, modified and remodeled several times in the period between the Renaissance and the Baroque era. The facade is very simple and austere, while inside the church has three naves marked by ancient columns with capitals, arches and vaults. Finally, at the end of the naves, the apse in living stone houses a baptismal font from the Renaissance period.