Apulian and Attic vases in an intact nineteenth century collection
Ruvo di Puglia, at the edge of the Murgia west of Bari, was in antiquity Rubi, a prosperous Peucetian city in contact with the Greek world, and its necropolises yielded thousands of splendid painted vases. In the nineteenth century the local brothers Giovanni and Giulio Jatta, lawyers and passionate collectors, gathered about two thousand of them, saving them from dispersal and export abroad.
The Museo Nazionale Jatta, in the family palace in the town centre, is a rare example of a nineteenth century private museum that has remained exactly as it was conceived, with its original display cases arranged in four rooms. The collection includes Attic vases imported from Athens, with black and red figures, and above all Apulian red-figure vases, made by workshops in southern Italy in the fourth century BC, with mythological scenes, women, warriors and funerary subjects. Its masterpiece is the Talos Krater, a large red-figure vase depicting the death of the bronze giant Talos, defeated by the Argonauts with the help of Medea, one of the most famous Greek vases in the world. Ruvo also has a beautiful Romanesque cathedral with a carved façade.
Tip: the museum is small, about an hour is enough; combine it with a visit to the cathedral and a walk in the historic centre.
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