About the Duomo di San Corrado

Construction of what is now the Duomo di San Corrado in Molfetta began around 1150, at the edge of the city’s historic centre near its harbour, during a period when Molfetta was growing into a significant crossroads of Mediterranean commerce and culture; the building was only completed between the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century. Originally dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, the church served as Molfetta’s cathedral until 1785, when the episcopal seat was transferred to the former Jesuit college church; the older building was then rededicated to the city’s patron saint, Corrado. That patron, Corrado di Baviera, was the third son of Duke Henry IX (“the Black”) of Bavaria, and set out alone on pilgrimage toward Jerusalem sometime in the 12th century, but appears never to have reached his destination, instead finding hospitality with a community of Benedictine monks near Modugno, not far from Bari. There, Corrado chose to pursue a life of hermitic penitence, praying and fasting inside a karstic cave and resting on bare rock for the remainder of his days; his body was initially preserved at the Modugno abbey, which became a pilgrimage site for the devoted, many of them from Molfetta, the town believed to have hosted Corrado during his original journey toward the Holy Land. When the abbey was later suppressed under Robert of Anjou and left unguarded, the people of Molfetta took the opportunity to transport Corrado’s bones to their own city — an event still commemorated annually on 9 February — and his cult was formally confirmed through equivalent canonisation by Pope Gregory XVI on 6 April 1832. Architecturally, the Duomo is among the largest and most distinctive surviving examples of Apulian Romanesque architecture, its central nave covered by three domes set in axial succession on a hexagonal drum, a configuration found nowhere else on this scale within the regional Romanesque tradition, flanked by two lower side aisles beneath sloped roofs.