Bari

Sister cities

• Mar del Plata
• San Giovanni Rotondo
• Monte Sant'Angelo
• Celle di San Vito
• Vasto
• Lublin
• Batumi
• Podgorica
• Assisi
• Guangzhou
• Cardiff
• Bandung

History

Bari itself known in antiquity as Barium, was a harbour of the Iapygian Peuceti. The authors of the Etymologicum Magnum have preserved an etymology by authors of antiquity about Barium, which they explain as the word "house" in Messapic. The city had strong Greek influences before the Roman era. In Ancient Greek, it was known as Βάριον. In the 3rd century BC, it became part of the Roman Republic and was subsequently Romanized. The city developed strategic significance as the point of junction between the coast road and the Via Traiana and as a port for eastward trade; a branch road to Tarentum led from Barium. Its harbour, mentioned as early as 181 BC, was probably the principal one of the districts in ancient times, as it is at present, and was the centre of a fishery. The first historical bishop of Bari was Gervasius who was noted at the Council of Sardica in 347. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, Bari was invaded by Barbarians and occupied by the Ostrogoths. It was taken from them by the Byzantine Empire during the Gothic wars and disputed for the following two centuries with the Lombards of the Duchy of Benevento, who made it a steward. Throughout this period, and indeed throughout the Middle Ages, Bari served as one of the major slave depots of the Mediterranean, providing a central location for the trade in Slavic slaves. The slaves were mostly captured by Venice from Dalmatia, by the Holy Roman Empire from what is now Eastern Germany and Poland, and by the Byzantines from elsewhere in the Balkans, and were generally destined for other parts of the Byzantine Empire and (most frequently) the Muslim states surrounding the Mediterranean: the Abbasid Caliphate, the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba, the Emirate of Sicily, and the Fatimid Caliphate (which…

Geography

Bari is the largest urban and metro area on the Adriatic. It is located in southern Italy, at a more northerly latitude than Naples, further south than Rome. Bari has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa) bordering on a cold semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSk) due to high evapotranspiration, with mild winters and hot, dry summers. Bari is divided into five municipalities (Municipi), constituted in 2014. The municipality is also divided into 17 official neighbourhoods (quartieri). {| class="wikitable sortable" ! width="50%" | Municipio ! width="15%" | Population (2021) ! width="15%" | Area (km²) !Density |- | Municipio 1 | style="text-align:right" | 113,071 | style="text-align:right" | km2 |4,697.6 |- | Municipio 2 | style="text-align:right" | 91,797 | style="text-align:right" | km2 |5,945.4 |- | Municipio 3 | style="text-align:right" | 49,452 | style="text-align:right" | km2 |2,196.9 |- | Municipio 4 | style="text-align:right" | 35,425 | style="text-align:right" | km2 |1,068.3 |- | Municipio 5 | style="text-align:right" | 26,203 | style="text-align:right" | km2 |1,215.4 |}