In the heart of Salento, the Cathedral of Santa Caterina d’Alessandria in Galatina stands as one of the most extraordinary masterpieces of Gothic-Romanesque art in southern Italy. Commissioned by Prince Raimondello Orsini Del Balzo, it was built between 1369 and 1391 to house a precious relic of St. Catherine’s finger, which Raimondello himself brought back with him on his return from the Crusades. Declared a national monument in 1870 and later a minor basilica in 1992, it represents the highest symbol of Galatina’s historical and cultural identity.
The facade, in Apulian Romanesque style, features a large central rose window, finely carved portals and a tricuspid structure that anticipates the elegance of the interior. The building is divided into as many as five naves, offering a majestic space, entirely decorated: vaults, pillars, walls and arches are in fact covered with a unique cycle of frescoes, created in the first decades of the 15th century at the behest of Maria d’Enghien, Raimondello’s widow. Artists from different schools participated in this undertaking, including Giottesque and Sienese masters and the painter Francesco d’Arezzo (Franciscus De Arecio).
The frescoes narrate episodes from the Old and New Testaments, as well as scenes from the life of St. Catherine and the Last Judgment. This iconographic and stylistic complexity has prompted critic Philippe Daverio to define the Basilica as “the first Western place where internationalism achieves its own language,” a place where myth, spirituality and European artistic cultures merge: from Flanders to France, from Tuscany to southern Italy.
In the presbytery, the apse holds the tomb mausoleum of Giovanni Antonio Orsini Del Balzo, son of Raimondello, while next to the basilica is the convent of the Franciscan Friars Minor, rebuilt between the 16th and 17th centuries, with a quadrangular cloister frescoed in 1696 by Friar Giuseppe da Gravina.
The basilica also preserves a precious treasure, not normally accessible to the public, which includes sacred art objects of extraordinary value: among them, a 12th-century Byzantine portable mosaic depicting the Redeemer, a chalice and reliquary in gilded silver containing the breast of St. Agatha, and the famous reliquary of St. Catherine’s finger.
With its layered artistic language and its symbolic and spiritual cargo, the Cathedral of Santa Caterina d’Alessandria is not only the religious heart of Galatina, but also one of the highest examples of cultural and intercultural dialogue in medieval Europe. A place where art becomes story and memory, capable of fascinating scholars, worshippers and travelers even today.
