Antiquarium di Canne della Battaglia — Attraction in Barletta

It’s shocking that this site is not more popular, considering what happened here. We had it to ourselves on a weekend afternoon in peak season. Museum is good. If you’re into military history at all, looking down onto the battlefield (just farmers’ fields today) is exhilarating on its own. Aside from the museum, there’s not really any curation for looking down at the battlefield while you’re standing there, so you have to go by what you remember (or look it up on your phone) to figure out where the battle happened. The medieval hilltop ruins, I’ll note, would be worth the entry fee even if Hannibal hadn’t completed his encirclement nearby. That settlement is better-curated on-site.

On a separate note, we took transit to get here. Despite it being a bus, you can check schedules on trenitalia’s website (the stop is called “canne della battaglia” and it’s a €1.30 bus ticket from the back of Barletta’s train station). You can buy the bus tickets from a window inside Barletta train station (get return tickets as there is no place to buy them at the site). The bus departures at both ends were at the scheduled times. The driver who picked us up said we were the first passengers he had ever seen at that stop in 10 years (he wasn’t going to stop until I waved my hands and yelled).

All that to say, it’s worth it for history buffs and you don’t even need...

An amazing museum which highlights the Battle Of Cannae but also informs the visitors about Cannae before and after the battle.

The staff were very friendly and spoke to me in English as my Italian is very limited and one staff member even turned the video to English from Italian so I could understand it.

I’ve wanted to visit Cannae for a long time and the sense that you are walking in the footsteps of history’s greatest general is palpable, even down to the ‘Volturnus Wind’ that hits you on the edge of the cliff and which Hannibal used against Paullas and Varo.

Amazing, epic and timeless...

The museum offered audio guides in English, which was nice. However, the multimedia room, which is supposed to be the highlight of the exhibition, was not available for technical reasons. We came mainly for the battle and there was little said about it, more information about the local site. From a military-historical point of view, the museum at Lake Trasimeno was much better. It would have been enough if the view of the battlefield had been accompanied by a map explaining exactly where the warring parties...