Part of the defence system of the ancient medieval city, this structure was an essential part of the ancient local history.

Founded in 1086 at the behest of Count Goffredo of Conversano, it was built on a small peninsula stretching between two inlets that form two small natural harbours, known today as Lidi Santo Stefano and Porto Ghiacciolo. The structure is now private.

The castle abbey is, in fact, more than ever, part of public life, especially in the summer months when the beach is swarming with bathers. Then it too lives its golden season, as does its owner. Otherwise it would stand, like so many monuments, relegated to serving who knows what sins. Camping, which extends the tourist movement southwards, also brings lifeblood to nature and art.

With the Benedictines, from the 12th to the 14th century, the abbey was at the pinnacle of humanistic and artistic culture.

The Knights of Jerusalem, who settled there in the 15th century, transformed it into a castle enclosed by walls and a moat. Private individuals, who bought it at the time of Murat and his anti-feudal laws, turned it into a masseria.

The abbot is called Richard and is remembered as homo mitis. This was in 1236. The abbey had substantial land revenues to afford to rebuild and worthily honour its church.

If the masters of Frederick II did not come to work the stone, these of the portal of St. Stephen's equally echo the Classical fashion in vogue in the reign of Frederick II.

Observe the faces of the angels sprouting on the capitals amidst the acanthus leaves.

In the lunette we see Christ enthroned with the Gospel on his knees and in the act of blessing, while at his feet prostrate two miniature figures in adoration, possibly Abbot Riccardo and another from the convent.

On either side of Christ are St. Stephen and St. George, the priest on the left, the warrior on the right. The type of bas-relief and the scanning of the figures in the empty space, which has the luminous function of the golden background of the mosaics, also take us back to classical models, e.g. the sarcophagi of Ravenna.

The interior had a worthy Renaissance counterpart to Romanesque culture and was the polyptych, now in the Boston Museum, which came from Venice along with many other gilded panels that enriched the churches of Monopoli and Apulia in the 15th century.

The visit has another important landmark and that is the rupestrian church, very close to the Romanesque one, confirming the common origins of many other monuments both within the city of Monopoli and in the countryside.

One descends by means of a staircase into what may have been the primitive Benedictine church, in any case pre-dating the foundation of the abbey in the second half of the 11th century. 11th century, with the apse on the left as one enters and a pillar in the centre of the entire room that allows the opening of three arches and with them the internal articulation into spaces and rooms.

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CREDITS: Comune di Monopoli.