The short answer for Foggia is, not a lot. Successive earthquakes throughout the centuries, and in particular the Allied bombing during WW2, have left very little for the tourist to see.
On the other hand, I ate very well here, which is often the case with ugly Italian towns I find. Please see my next post Foggia – Where to Eat. My map is here.
Various fountains are dotted about town. The nicest one is Fontana del Sele in Piazza Camillo Benso Cavour.
The Cattedrale di Foggia is a nice example of Baroque if you like that kind of thing.
The lower half that survived the quakes is Romanesque.
The interior looks quite attractive though.
One of the oldest existing buildings in town is the Palazzo Marzano Tafuri aka the Palazzo De Vita De Luca, near the cathedral. The lower two stories are 16th century and designed in a Neapolitan Renaisance style, while the third floor was added in the 18th century.
It’s neighbour at 84 Via Arpi also looks like a hotchpotch of styles and in equally bad nick.
There’s a bit of fascist era Rationalism dotted about.
I quite like this old building on the main shopping street but I don’t know anything about it.
And that’s about it, although I left a few things, like a visit to the town’s museum, till next time.
One of the best things about Foggia is that it makes a good jump off point for visiting the Gargano National Park www.parcogargano.it and the Tremeti Islands www.pugliaandculture.com, both of which I must go to one day.
Italy’s public architecture from the 1920s and 30s usually gets what they call ‘a bad rap’, often for political reasons but it’s not all bad. Certainly the ‘romantic-heroic realism’ of things like that bas-relief you show are pretty silly but that’s a kind of thing found from that era across the political spectrum from Fascism/Nazism to Stalinism but there’s quite a few Italian public or corporate buildings from then that are quite respectable Modernist/Deco, such as the bank and the government offices you picture. Rome is full of ugly triumphalist eagles and stuff like “Mussolini’s Typewriter” in Piazza Venezia but the ‘Square Colosseum’ down in EUR (https://theitalianj0b.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/romes-square-colosseum/) or the original bits of the Foro Italico have for me a certain appeal of purity and directness, successfully evoking classical architecture rather than parodying it as happened later. And there’s some very fine Deco domestic architecture to be found along the coast of Liguria from La Spezia to Ventimiglia, especially seaside villas.
Yes, I have issues with architecture being called fascist or Stalinist, two movements that happened to coincide with modernism,
For instance I really like this ‘fascist’ post office in Ostia, as well as some of the futurist villas along the seafront:
https://gannet39.com/2015/01/21/edgy-ostia/
Conicidentally this interesting article landed in my inbox today as well:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/asmara-eritrea-unesco-world-heritage-site?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4c69a9c74e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_03_05_Not_London&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-4c69a9c74e-69975545&ct=t(EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_03_05_2019_Not_London)&mc_cid=4c69a9c74e&mc_eid=fce05cd36f
I really wanted to get down to EUR on my recent trip to Rome but didn’t quite get the time to do it. Always good to leave something for next time though.