Every design for Corato

Corato was laid out in 1046 by Peter I of Trani, who gave the new town a castle, four corner towers, perimeter walls, four gates and two main streets crossing at right angles, a plan that held until the sixteenth century and still shapes the old centre. Local tradition reaches further back, to a Roman veteran called Caius Oratus who is said to have lent the village his name.

What carries Corato's name well beyond Apulia is the olive. The Coratina variety comes from here, and olive groves, vineyards and almond orchards cover the eastern slopes of the Murge around the town. From the seventeenth century Corato spread beyond its walls, adding churches and aristocratic palaces such as the Palazzo delle pietre pizzute, and the Romanesque cathedral remains its oldest church.

Put Piazza Indipendenza on a shirt and you are wearing the centre of a farming town that has kept its medieval outline for nearly a thousand years.