San Giovanni al Sepolcro is the most unusual of Brindisi's churches — a small, circular Romanesque building from around 1100, hidden in a narrow street just back from the waterfront. The cylindrical form, pierced by a portico with carved capitals, is distinctive among the churches of Puglia, and its Crusader origins give it a particular historical weight.
The interior retains fragments of medieval frescoes, some dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — faded but still decipherable, showing biblical scenes in that spare Byzantine style that predates the visual richness of the Gothic. The church is often locked outside of services, but it is worth ringing the bell or asking at the tourist office about access times. Even from the outside, the building is worth seeking out: it sits in a quarter of the old town that has changed surprisingly little since the Norman period.