Santa Maria del Casale

A Crusader church in Brindisi, Italy

Brindisi's one saving grace is a bus ride north of town, the AD 1322 Norman-Gothic church of ★ Santa Maria del Casale (take bus 3d from the station and ask the driver to let you off), with a facade patterned in zigzags and chessboards of bluish-white and tan stones.

Knights on their way to the Crusades would stop here to pray before boarding their boats, and the frescoes inside were meant to bolster their courage, reminding them what they were fighting for (on the right of the nave is a Madonna Surrounded by Knights) and what happened to eternal souls should faith fail (the gruesome Last Judgment filling the end wall).

In the Middle Ages, the folks with time to kill were Crusaders, who would arrive at this ancient port in small groups until a quorum was reached, a leader showed up, and they would all set sail across the Mediterranean to liberate the Holy Land from the infidels.

On my way to the airport to return my rental car, I paused as Santa Maria del Casale, a church with a delightfully oddball geometric façade poking forlornly out of the countryside, set against the barbed-wire fence of a military base. Machine gun-toting men in camouflage patrolled a few feet from the apse while the cries of a Sunday soccer game floated from somewhere behind the trees to my right.

The flagstones in front of the church were still covered in rice and dried pasta from a wedding. Mass was on inside, so I could only peer from the doorway at the remaining scraps of fresco that were painted in the fourteenth century to bolster the spirits and resolve of the Crusaders—valiant battle scenes and, surrounded by knights, a resplendent Madonna in whose name the warriors would soon be fighting in faraway lands. I wondered if the army guards ever came over the fence to pray here.