Provincia di Bari
The Bari fond is not a map of today's province
The archive at Bari names the comuni it covers, one by one, and the list is not the modern province. Thirty-seven places are in it. Andria, Trani and Barletta are not, because in 2004 they left to form a new province — but their paper did not move with them. Levy and military records divide again, across three separate sections at Bari, Trani and Barletta. Before anything else, check whether the ancestral comune is on the list.
Explore the comuni
Comuni in Provincia di Bari
Civil registers were kept by the comune, not the province. If one of these is your family's, start there.
Where the records are
What Archivio di Stato di Bari holds
The archive operates with two sections, at Trani and at Barletta, and the holdings are divided between them rather than duplicated.
The civil-status core is the Atti dello Stato civile, 1809-1938, with decennial indexes and allegati, for the thirty-seven named comuni listed above. A run to 1938 is long by southern standards; many archives stop at 1865 or 1900.
Levy records are deliberately split, and this is where researchers lose time. At Bari the Consiglio provinciale di leva holds levy lists for the circondario di Altamura (classes 1842-1890); sea-levy lists (classes 1876-1899) and lists of the rejected (classes 1882-1895) from the Capitaneria di porto di Bari; and land-levy lists for the comuni of the Bari military mandamento (classes 1891-1925). Records for the rest of the territory sit at Trani or Barletta.
The Barletta section holds no civil status at all — only the Ufficio circondariale di leva di Barletta (classes 1842-1934) and the distretto militare di Barletta (classes 1847-1934). Its digitisation is recorded as Non prevista, meaning not planned.
Bari's own digitisation is recorded as Parziale. The sea-levy series is worth knowing about for a coastal family: a man who went to sea was enrolled through the Capitaneria rather than the army, and his record sits in a different series entirely.
Your roots
Check the comune against the list
Bari is one of the few provinces where the archive publishes an explicit roll of the comuni its civil-status fond covers, and that makes the first step unusually concrete. The Atti dello Stato civile names: Acquaviva delle Fonti, Alberobello, Altamura, Bari, Binetto, Bitetto, Bitonto, Bitritto, Capurso, Canneto-Montrone — later Adelfia — Casamassima, Cassano delle Murge, Castellana Grotte, Cellamare, Conversano, Gioia del Colle, Giovinazzo, Gravina di Puglia, Grumo Appula, Locorotondo, Modugno, Mola di Bari, Monopoli, Noci, Noicattaro, Palo del Colle, Poggiorsini, Polignano a Mare, Putignano, Rutigliano, Sammichele di Bari, Sannicandro di Bari, Santeramo in Colle, Toritto, Triggiano, Turi and Valenzano.
If the comune is there, the fond runs 1809 to 1938 with decennial indexes and allegati — an unusually long single run. If it is not, the family is probably from the territory that became Barletta-Andria-Trani, and the search moves to the Bari sections rather than to a separate archive.
Note Canneto and Montrone: they merged into Adelfia in 1927. An ancestor born before that year was born in one of the two, not in Adelfia.
The province
Terra di Bari, and a province that shed a third of itself
The territory was governed as Terra di Bari, and the State Archives date the Intendenza di Terra di Bari to the law of 8 August 1806 that reorganised the Kingdom of Naples into provinces. That name outlived the kingdom in the filing: nineteenth-century material is catalogued under Terra di Bari far more often than under any modern label.
It was a large and rich province, running from the Murgia plateau down to a coast of trading ports. The inland towns — Altamura, Gravina, Santeramo — looked south toward Basilicata and lived by grain and sheep. The coastal ones — Monopoli, Mola, Polignano, Giovinazzo — lived by the sea and by olive oil, and their families moved along the Adriatic rather than inland. The Valle d'Itria around Alberobello, Locorotondo and Putignano is different again, a landscape of dry-stone trulli and smallholdings.
The modern rupture came in 2004, when Andria, Barletta and Trani were detached to form the province of Barletta-Andria-Trani. Administratively that was a clean break. Archivally it was not: the historic records stayed in the fonds and sections where they had always been, so a family from Andria still searches through Bari. This is the single most common mistake made on this province, and it is made by people who are working from a current map.
Culture & traditions
Plateau, coast and trulli
Terra di Bari was never one culture, and the divisions still predict where a family married and where it went.
The Murgia is high, dry limestone country. Altamura, Gravina and Santeramo in Colle are grain towns with a pastoral history — the sheep tracks ran south into Basilicata, and marriage across that provincial line was ordinary. A Murgia surname often has cousins in Matera or Potenza.
The coast from Giovinazzo through Molfetta, Bari, Mola, Polignano and Monopoli is a line of ports, each with its own maritime patron and its own emigration channel. Departure here frequently ran through shipping work before it ran through farming, and families reappear in Adriatic and then American ports.
The Valle d'Itria — Alberobello, Locorotondo, Putignano, Noci — is the trulli country, smallholding rather than latifundia, and socially distinct from both. Its emigration patterns are later and lighter than the Murgia's.
The city of Bari itself grew enormously in the nineteenth century when the Murattian quarter was laid out beyond the old town, and families moving into it from the province appear in the city registers within a generation of appearing in their own.
Province established
1806
Comuni covered
41
Historic names
Terra di Bari · Intendenza di Terra di Bari · Circondario di Altamura · Circondario di Barletta · Mandamento militare di Bari
Languages & dialects
Italian · Barese · Murgian varieties · Apulo-Barese of the Valle d'Itria
Traditions
San Nicola at Bari · the trulli of the Valle d'Itria · Murgia transhumance · Adriatic maritime trades · olive and grain harvests
The State Archives of Bari state that the Intendenza di Terra di Bari was instituted by the law of 8 August 1806 reorganizing the Kingdom of Naples into provinces. This is used as the provincial-territory origin marker.
Visit the province
Going to the archive in Bari
Establish two things before travelling: whether the comune is on the civil-status list, and which section holds the military records you want. Those two answers can send you to different buildings.
For civil status between 1809 and 1938, Bari is the destination for the thirty-seven named comuni. For a family from Andria, Barletta or Trani, the modern province is no guide — the records remain in the Bari system.
If you are chasing a seafarer, ask for the Capitaneria di porto series rather than the army levy lists; they are separate and cover different years. Confirm access and the location of the specific section in advance.
What to see
The Murgia — Altamura, Gravina, Santeramo in Colle, high grain and sheep country looking toward Basilicata.
The Adriatic ports — Giovinazzo, Molfetta, Mola di Bari, Polignano a Mare, Monopoli.
The Valle d'Itria — Alberobello, Locorotondo, Putignano and the trulli smallholdings.
Bari vecchia and the Murattian quarter — the old town and the nineteenth-century grid laid out beyond it.
Castel del Monte — the Hohenstaufen octagon on the Murgia, now in Barletta-Andria-Trani but historically Terra di Bari.
Conversano and Castellana Grotte — the inland belt between plateau and coast.
Not yet in the collection
Want to see Provincia di Bari represented?
Requests are how we decide what comes next — every one is read, and the places people ask for are the places that get made.