Concattedrale di San Clemente Papa

Locals call it simply the Duomo. The church on Largo Cattedrale, built between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is the most important sacred building of Ruvo di Puglia and one of the major statements of Apulian Romanesque: a sculptured triple-portal facade, a twelve-ray rose window and a bell tower that began as a defensive tower.

Why it matters

Apulian Romanesque produced a family of great facade-sculpture churches, and Ruvo's belongs squarely in that company. The municipality's heritage catalogue describes it as the town's most important church and the fulcrum of the historic centre, and the building earns both claims on sight: almost every stone of the front carries figure work — apostles, evangelists, a griffin, lions carried by telamons — arranged in a legible theological programme. The church also documents the town's institutional history. It served the ancient diocese of Ruvo until that see was merged in 1986 into the diocese of Molfetta-Ruvo-Giovinazzo-Terlizzi, whose co-cathedral it now is. And beneath the floor, excavations have exposed a stack of earlier tombs and structures, which makes the building as much an archaeological site as a place of worship.

What to notice

The façade is crowned by hanging arches, with three portals set inside large pointed arches that rest on half-columns. The central portal carries the densest carving: bas-reliefs of Christ, the Madonna, Saint John the Baptist and the twelve apostles, the Agnus Dei, the Evangelists, and an allegory of the Eucharist in which two peacocks peck at a grape cluster. Above the portal crouches a griffin, a symbol of the double nature of Christ; at the sides, columns crowned by griffins rise over lions borne on telamons.

Higher up, a mullioned window holds a bas-relief of the Archangel Michael in its lunette, flanked by a small pierced rose window ringed by four sculptures of demonic and angelic creatures. The dominant feature is the great rose window with twelve rays, set over sixteenth-century pierced metalwork from a local workshop; in the niche above it stands a seated figure that some readings identify as Roberto II di Bassavilla, the lord associated with the building campaign.

Inside, the plan is a Latin cross with three naves ending in three apses and a transept. Notice that the nave columns are heterogeneous in origin: those on the right are cruciform piers carved with mythological reliefs, reused from earlier structures. The bell tower, standing only 2.5 metres from the transept, rises 36.85 metres on a six-metre square plan; look for the contrast between its lower defensive masonry and the two upper floors added in the eighteenth century. An archaeological hypogeum lies beneath the church.

Context and history

The church rose during the rebuilding of Ruvo after its eleventh-century destruction, in the period when the town belonged to the county of Conversano; the principal account connects the campaign with the bishop Daniele and the Norman-era lord Roberto II di Bassavilla. The bell tower is older than the church: built around the year 1000 as a square watch and defence tower, it was absorbed into the sacred complex and given two additional floors in the eighteenth century, and it now holds three bells weighing about eighteen quintals in total. After Italian unification the tower was declared a national monument in its own right.

The church is commonly known as the Duomo and identified in municipal and ecclesiastical sources as the Concattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. In 1986 the centuries-old diocese of Ruvo ceased to exist as an independent see and entered the union that formed the diocese of Molfetta-Ruvo-Giovinazzo-Terlizzi, reducing the church from cathedral to co-cathedral without diminishing its role in the town's religious life.