Baptistery of San Giovanni in Tumba

Very well preserved, well done explanations and few people. A visit after the angel's cave is recommended.

Recently restored ancient baptistery, it can be visited by paying the entrance fee of one euro.

Very nice place, few people. For a euro I recommend you see it.

Price 1 euros. Very quick visit ...

Rotari's Tomb A short distance from S. Maria Maggiore, and almost attached to the apse the most characteristic monument rises from the ruined church of San Pietro of Monte Sant'Angelo: the so-called "Tomb of Rotari", which in the opinion of most writers is also "the most mysterious monument of southern Italy », so for its shape as for the use to which it owed originally intended, but above all, perhaps for the epigraph appended inside and around which every more or less cultured visitor wonders for centuries. This epigraph is made up of three lines engraved on a single line: + INCOLA MONTANI PARMENSIS PROLE PAGANI ET MONTIS NATUS RODELCRIMI VOCITATUS HANC FIERI TUMBAM IUSSERUNT HI DUO PULCHRAM Our Pagano (of Parmesan origins) and our Rodelcrimo or Rodelgrimo, whose families recur more than once in the low-time Gargano maps and who must also have had family relations, if the sister of a Pagan, of the name Augessa, as it appears from a Cavense card of Lucera of 1109, had married a Rodelgrimo, son of Sygenolfo, then living in Lucera. Undoubtedly two of the most prominent men, and because of wealth and positions held, of that very interesting "mountain" society that had been forming with the rapid growth of the new inhabited center around the Sanctuary of the Archangel, an uninterrupted destination of popes, of kings, emperors, princes, cardinals, men of high culture and humble faithful, coming on pilgrimage. the "chapel" or "tribune" of San Giovanni was limited around the year 1000 to the nut of the gallery on the ground floor only. In short, it stopped at the frame with bas-reliefs in the bases, pulled over the pointed arches. Later the hemispherical dome fell and rested on this square a little higher than the frame, here are our two «Galantuomini», Pagano and Rodelgrimo. And at this elevation, rich in windows and ornaments of different kinds, the people gave the name of "tomb", in the sense that at that time it was proper to the word "tumba"; for which the beautiful Baptistery of San Giovanni becomes from now on his lips "San Giovanni in tomba". The people of Puglia were as a whole a cultured people, and his own culture, of predominantly classical origin, always received new food from the continuous flow of pilgrims to its Shrines, from coming and going of the Crusaders of the entire Christian world, from its ever more flourishing trade with the major Mediterranean centers. Dominators and marauders of every part of Europe they alternated for centuries on the earth of Puglia called "fortunate" as Dante said, because exposed, due to its geographical position, to the various vicissitudes of fortune; but they never succeeded in drying or altering their creative vein. Working and raising the stone was a way for his people, perhaps the first way, to sing even in pain.