Santa Maria del Casale stands about 3 km north of the city centre, near the airport, and is easy to miss — it sits in an unremarkable landscape of light industrial buildings and roundabouts. The effort of getting there is entirely worth it. The church, built in the early fourteenth century, has a polychrome façade in alternating bands of pale and dark sandstone that is unlike anything else in Puglia, combining Gothic forms with Byzantine decorative ideas in a way that suggests a workshop of eclectic talents.
Inside, the walls and ceiling are covered with frescoes from the 1320s and 1330s, including that vast Last Judgement on the entrance wall. The colours are still vivid — ochres, reds, and an intense lapis lazuli blue — and the iconographic programme is unusually complex. The church is well maintained and usually open in the mornings; a small contribution is asked but not required.