history and geography of the puglia

Chief town of Region: 
Bari (332.100 ab.)

Chief towns of Province: 
Brindisi (93.000 ab.)

Foggia (154.800 ab.)

Lecce (97.500 ab.)

Taranto (207.200 ab.)

Principal islands:

Tremiti Islands 3,06 Km²

Principal Mountains:

Monte Cornacchia 1152 m 
Principal rivers:

Ofanto 134 Km, Cervaro 107 Km, Fortore 86 Km, Carapelle 85 Km 
Principal lakes:

Varano lake 60,5 Km², Lesina lake 51,5 Km² 
Surface: 19.357 Km²
Inhabitants: 4.087.000 
Density: 211 ab/Km² 

Apulia (Puglia) is the region located in the South-End of the Italian peninsula. It's bordered by Adriatic Sea to the North-East, and by the Ionian Sea to the South. Its landscape is part plain (54%), mountain (1,5%) and hill (44%).

The most elevated point is Monte Cornacchia (1152 meters); there only a few rivers, scarce in water and located mainly in the northern part, the main river is the Ofanto. Near the Gargano there are the two largest coastal lakes in Italy, the Lake of Lesina and the Lake of Varano, both a few meters deep. The Tremiti Islands (a popular holiday destination) are part of Apulia.

Bari is the capital of the region and is most densely populated, followed by Taranto, Foggia, Lecce, Andria, Brindisi and Barletta. The population of the region is mainly concentred in towns and large rural suburbs.

In comparison to other regions in the South, Apulia is more economically developed. Agriculture is still the primary industry, despite the harsh climate and enviroment in most areas; vegetables are cultivated (lettuce, capsicum, fennels, artichokes), tobacco, grapes, olives, almonds; the fishing industry (fish, molluscs and crustaceans) plays a very important role; breeding has a minor role.

The industry exploits natural deposits of bauxite and bentonite and the largest Italian salt pans; there are a few major plants in the petrochemical and iron and steel manufacturing industry and, smaller enterprises of various fields. Tourism has good future perspectives of development, both for Apulian history and art, and for the seaside as well, although it is yet to be developed.

Fonte: www.globalgeografia.com

The history of Puglia is history of dominations and poverty, because this earth has been theater of dominations and abandonment. 
The archaeological rests testify us a distant prehistory in the millennia. The stations and the apulians and materan graves of the civilization of the bronze connect him with the appenninic group: we will remember the caves within the Pulo of Molfetta, adapted and enlarged for use of residence; the villages of log-cabins of Coppa Nevigata, near Manfredonia, of Terlizzi, Bari, Leporano and of the Scoglio del tonno. In Puglia they are enough frequent the megalithic graves to dolmen, attributable to recent phases of the civilization of the bronze. Near to the dolmens, during the eneas civilization, were had also pit graves and graves constituted by funeral caves, artificially dig in the ground and preceded by grits of access (oven grave or sicilian type). At the dolmens, in the apulians regions, other megalithic monuments are connected: the dense stones or menhir, the specchies. On the Gargano the aspect proper of the eneas civilization actually lingered to welcome characteristic forms of the first civilization of the iron, among which sepulchral tumults of stones, protective of the funeral cassette. Toward the end of the VIII century a.C. a vascular, typical and limited production to Puglia developed him for forms of vase and painted geometric decoration.

In the historical times, Puglia appears lived by illirical populations (Iapigi, Dauni, Peucezi, Messapi) and from Greek colonies, among which great importance had the doric Taranto. After the sannitic and pirric wars, conquered Taranto (272 a.C.), Rome reduced in federated city the centers of Puglia, of which many rebelled him during the annibalic war and then during the social war. In the augusteo arrangement, today's Puglia was inclusive in the second region, Apulia et Calabria. Although any apulian center ever purchased in age Roman great importance, nevertheless Puglia reached during the empire a notable degree of economic flowering, especially in how much its geographical position did a center of communications of great importance, which they made head of it, through the harbors, the great streets toward the east, Brindisi was the term of the Appia Street, that connected Puglia in Rome, together with the Traian Street.

With the fall of the empire of west, the region knew endless devastations, disputed from Byzantine, Longobardi and Franchi, and laid a trap by the Saracens. Advance on the street of an autonomous civil and military organization, some cities, with a great insurrection on the principle of the second century led by Melo, they tried to free themselves from the Byzantine dominion. But really the help of Norman adventurers definite of their fate, and the whole Puglia entered the orbit of the new Norman monarchy; they didn't miss the revolts against the centralizing unitary state, but the rebellions concluded him, under Guglielmo I, with the partial destruction of Bari. Above all with Guglielmo II the commercial traffics with the east, in good accord with Venice, will dictate to Puglia a period of prosperity. Divided instead by hates between city and city during the difficult Norman succession, it still found again a relative calm under the iron government of Federico II: cathedrals rose (Bitonto), fortitudes (Castel del Monte), fairs were founded; the ports were favorite to the Venetian ships and also Genoese. But, during the dominion of the Angioini, grows her general heaviness and the hostility for the advantages granted to the foreign fleets given again to the apulian cities various reasons for rebellions, above all when the Aragonese ones disputed Puglia to the Angioini. After the Aragonese victory, the hope of escaping the avarice from the barons belonging to the regal property held faithful the cities, threaten also from the raids of the Turks (1479-80). But Ferrante II, to face the war against Carlo VIII of France, said in pawn some cities in Venice, that well soon turned the temporary possession into conquest: Venetian so they were Trani, Brindisi, Otranto, Gallipoli.

The peace between French and Spaniards (1529) it almost all brought Puglia under the only Spanish dominion that was heavy for the fiscal pressure, for the administrative disorder, for the refusal of commercial relationships with the foreign countries. Venice, exhausted particularly Puglia, distressed by famines, from the malaria and from the plague, from the sore of an inactive landown and from the speculations of avid profiteers. Nevertheless, to the big motion of civilian renewal of the kingdom, in the XVIII century, Puglia actively participated, as to the giacobin preparation of the Neapolitan revolution. After the hard military occupation of the cardinal Ruffo, the reforms of the French decade seemed to return Puglia to a civil way of living, but the borbonic restoration of 1815 arrived unexpectedly, for whose characterization will be enough to remember the 1817 law, which established that the Tavoliere had to become again uncultivated. They rose numerous and active the Sette and, everywhere, the Carbonari. The insurrection bursted to Foggia in July 3 rd 1820 found adherent among all the classes. But, returned the borbonic government, he also went clarifying the differences, while, on a commune antiborbonic background, the moderate theses and those ultraliberalis or those were not granted of social revolution.

The to spread however some National Party of Action, but above all the success of the garibaldinas consignment, made to overcome every difference so much that the plebiscite for the annexation to the Kingdom of Italy almost brought in favor a victory unanimous. Well soon however the missed division of the public properties earths, which been promised, and the novelty of the military conscription they aroused a violent rebellion, that, exhausted him, it had as I drag a long brigandage. The sale, tumultuosly performed, of the good of the ecclesiastical axle, or of the public properties quotas, while it was increasing the class of the small owners, incapable however to profitably transform the crops, didn't resolve the problem of the proletariat, neither the latifundium was on its way from its owners to more modern crops. Close to these serious problems of the agrarian sector, the cities found again instead, in the unity, new activity. During the fascism, works were stimulated, what the construction of the bring of Bari, become center of an important fair («Fair of the East») and the commercial traffics were intensified.

It had so I begin the economic flowering of this earth that in the last decades as has used more and more some intense and qualified tourism. 

Fonte: www.giroscopio.com