CENTRO STORICO

Corso Garibaldi, a large boulevard for cars, is one of the main arteries of the city that leads to its most important monuments: the Cathedral, set back a little in Piazza Cardinale Felici, the Prefecture and the City Hall or Municipio, a building of fascist architecture. From the cathedral, you can reach the famous Via Arpi behind it. The area around Via Arpi is undoubtedly the most picturesque in the city. It is full of palaces and churches, a multitude of corbelled facades, wrought iron balconies and Renaissance galleries. Via Arpi can be taken from Piazza Vincenzo Nigri, where the Civic Museum, housed in Palazzo Arpi, and the Music Conservatory, dedicated to Umberto Giordano, a composer from Foggia, are located opposite each other.

A little further on, Piazza Federico II is distinguished by a beautiful fountain in the form of a small well, decorated with two eagles, the emblem of Swabian power. Continuing along Via Arpi, you arrive at the Cathedral Square where you can see two beautiful private homes: Palazzo Marzano Tafuri and Palazzo Vito de Luca, donated to the city by the patron Vincenzo Celentano in 1908. On the Vito de Luca palace, note the sculpted window frames and, on the balcony, the name of the owner at the time and his motto: "To see and be seen"(Per vedere e per essere visti)! Between these two palaces, an alleyway leads to the city's covered market, used as such in the morning (herbal market) and as a cultural center in the evening.

From Via Arpi, we pass under the Arco dell'Addolorata to admire the ^eighteenth century church of the same name, a beautiful example of baroque, very well preserved. In the same street, on the left, in a small square, stands the imposing façade of the church of Santa Chiara, rebuilt after the earthquake and transformed into an auditorium. A little further on, on the right, there are two other churches, that of San Giovanni di Dio (1748), with a concave-convex façade, and that of Sant'Agostino, dating from 1714 and of baroque construction.

Nearby is the church of San Tommaso, first built in the ^12th century and rebuilt in baroque style in 1766. A little further on, still on Via Arpi, you can stop in front of the ^18th century Palazzo Monti, before reaching, at the end, Via Fuiani, named after a philosopher and writer, commemorated by a plaque on the facade of the house where he lived, which is now the pizzeria Il Rifugio.