Arco Basso e la strada delle orecchiette
Bari
Opposite the Castello Svevo, a low stone arch leads into the tastiest alley of Bari Vecchia: strada Arco Basso, known to everyone as the orecchiette street. Here the ladies knead and shape pasta outside their front doors, just as their grandmothers did. Your treasure map takes you where Bari is made by hand.
History
The Arco Basso is one of more than fifty arches that, since the Middle Ages, have opened in the dense maze of Bari Vecchia. It looks onto piazza Federico II di Svevia, right in front of the castle entrance, and a single house separates it from the nearby Arco Alto. The alley beyond the vault is officially called strada Arco Basso, but the people of Bari know it as the orecchiette street.
What to see
Along the alley the ladies work on the doorsteps of their ground-floor homes, bent over wooden boards: dozens of orecchiette are born from the dough, little rough domes that hold the sauce, together with cavatelli and other traditional shapes. Orecchiette are listed among the Traditional Agri-food Products of Puglia, and the city's signature dish is still orecchiette with turnip tops (cime di rapa).
Curiosities
In Bari dialect orecchiette are often called strascinate, from the gesture of dragging the pasta across the wood. The ladies used to make them mostly for Sunday lunch; today the alley is an open-air workshop that intrigues visitors from all over the world.
Visiting
The street is pedestrian and free to walk, a few steps from the castle and the Cathedral. The best time is the morning, when work on the boards is at its busiest: watching is free, just move discreetly, because these are the front doors of the people who live here.
