The rose window embroidered in stone
On a hill on the edge of the Tavoliere, at the foot of the Daunian Mountains, Troia is a small town founded in 1019 by the Byzantines as a fortress against the Lombards, on the site of the Roman Aecae. Its name has nothing to do with the Troy of Homer. In the Middle Ages it was an important bishop's seat, with a prestigious cathedral where four councils of the Church were held.
The Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, built between 1093 and 1120, is a masterpiece of Apulian Romanesque with Pisan, Byzantine and Arab influences. Its façade is famous for the extraordinary rose window, one of the most beautiful in Italy: a wheel of eleven rays, each formed by a slender column and a panel of stone carved like lace with different geometric and floral patterns, as fine as embroidery. The central portal has bronze doors of 1119 by Oderisio da Benevento, with figures of Christ, saints and bishops and dragon-shaped knockers, and the sides are decorated with blind arches and lozenges in the Pisan style. The diocesan museum preserves the Exultet scrolls, illuminated parchments of the eleventh and twelfth centuries used in the Easter liturgy.
Tip: the rose window is best seen in the afternoon light; Troia is on the Via Francigena of the South, and the countryside around is dotted with wheat fields.
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