The cathedral, of the 12th century, has a carved portal and three apses decorated with small arches and pilasters, and contains a fine pulpit and episcopal throne in marble mosaic. Near it are two grottos 1 To the period after 335 belong numerous silver and bronze coins with the legend Caleno.
Pietro Orseolo and his successors rebuilt the church on a larger scale in the form of a basilica with three eastern apses and no transept, and Byzantine workmen were employed.
The eastern crypt, or confessio, extends under the whole of the choir and has three apses, like the upper church.
The cathedral (dedicated to St Nicholas the Pilgrim, a Greek assassinated at Trani in 1094 and canonized by Urban II.), on a raised open site near the sea, was consecrated, before its completion, in 1143; it is a basilica with three apses, a large crypt and a lofty tower, the latter erected in1230-1239by the architect whose name appears on the ambo in the cathedral of Bitonto, Nicolaus Sacerdos.
The cathedral of St Jean, the chief of the numerous churches of the town, was founded in the 4th century but has often undergone reconstruction and restoration; it resembles the Rhenish churches of Germany in the possession of apses at each of its extremities.
It had a fine Gothic façade: the interior had mosaics in the apses dating from 1330, and the nave contained 26 granite columns, said to have been brought from a temple of Poseidon near Faro, and had a fine wooden roof of 1260.
High, and its three apses probably covered with half domes, provided considerable shade.
Fedele (12th century), both in the town, are also Romanesque, and the apses have external galleries.
Begun by the Countess Matilda of Tuscany in 1099, after the designs of Lanfranc, and consecrated in 1184, the Romanesque cathedral (S Geminiano) is a low but handsome building, with a lofty crypt, under the choir (characteristic of the Tuscan Romanesque architecture), three eastern apses, and a façade still preserving some curious sculptures of the 12th century.
The outside of the church is plain, except the aisle walls and three eastern apses, which are decorated with intersecting pointed arches and other ornaments inlaid in marble.
The half dome of the central apse has a colossal halflength figure of Christ, with a seated Virgin and Child below; the other apses have full-length colossal figures of St Peter and St Paul.
The annexed plan of a Coptic monastery, from Lenoir, shows a church of three aisles, with cellular apses, and two ranges of cells on either side of an oblong gallery.
Vincenzo in Prato (833), now restored to its basilican form, with nave and two aisles divided by columns and three apses, and with small, flat arcading on the exterior, which is in brickwork; S.
Agatha, containing the relics of the saint, retains its three original Norman apses (1091), but is otherwise a large baroque edifice.
