Culture
Why the Real Santa Claus Is Buried in Bari
Here is a fact that stops most people mid-sentence: the man who became Santa Claus is buried in Puglia. Not a shrine to him, not a relic of a finger, but the greater part of his skeleton, resting under a Romanesque basilica in the old town of Bari, where it has lain since 1087.
The story of how it got there involves a daring theft, a maritime rivalry, a liquid that seeps from a stone tomb, and one of the great cases of a real saint slowly turning into a Christmas character. Here is how San Nicola of Bari became the world’s Santa Claus.
Who was Saint Nicholas?
Nicholas was a real man, a 4th-century Greek bishop of Myra, a town on the coast of what is now southern Turkey. Almost nothing about his life is documented, but the legends are consistent: he was famous for giving in secret. The best known tale has him dropping bags of gold through the window of a poor man’s house at night, to provide dowries for three daughters who would otherwise have had no future. In some versions the gold lands in stockings left to dry by the fire.
That single image, gifts arriving in secret, at night, in stockings, is the seed of everything that came later. Nicholas became the patron saint of children, of sailors and of merchants, and one of the most venerated saints in all of Christianity, East and West alike.
How his bones ended up in Bari
For seven centuries Nicholas rested in Myra. Then, in the 11th century, the region fell under Seljuk Turkish control and the tomb was suddenly vulnerable, and valuable. Bari and Venice, rival maritime powers, both wanted the relics of so important a saint for their own city.
Bari moved first. In the spring of 1087, an expedition of 62 sailors, including two priests named Lupo and Grimoldo and three ships belonging to the Dottula family, sailed to Myra, overpowered the monks guarding the tomb and carried off about half the skeleton in a hurry. The relics reached Bari on 9 May 1087. In 1100, Venetian crusaders passing through Myra collected the smaller fragments the Bari sailors had left behind and took them to the Lido of Venice.
For centuries each city claimed to hold the "real" Nicholas. The question was more or less settled in 1992, when the anatomist Luigi Martino, who had earlier examined the Bari relics, studied the Venice bones and found the two sets complementary: different pieces of the same man. Bari has the larger share, Venice the rest.
The basilica and the miraculous manna
Bari built the saint a home worthy of him. The Basilica di San Nicola went up between 1087 and 1197, its plain, fortress-like limestone facade a landmark of Puglian Romanesque. The crypt beneath, where the relics lie, was consecrated in 1089 in the presence of Pope Urban II.
Then there is the strangest part. A clear, watery liquid collects in the saint’s tomb, known as the manna di San Nicola, or the Santa Manna. Every year on the evening of 9 May, during the saint's May feast, the clergy lower a tube into the tomb and draw off some of the liquid, which is diluted with holy water and bottled. Believers have considered it miraculous for close to a thousand years. Whatever you make of it, the ritual is one of the oldest continuously performed in the city.
From San Nicola to Santa Claus
So how does a Greek bishop buried in Puglia become a jolly figure in a red suit? Through the Dutch. In the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas became Sinterklaas, a gift-bringer celebrated on the eve of his feast day. Dutch settlers carried the tradition across the Atlantic to New Amsterdam, the colony that became New York, and over the 1800s Sinterklaas was reshaped by American writers and illustrators into the character the whole world now knows as Santa Claus.
Strip away the reindeer and the North Pole and you are left with a saint remembered for giving gifts in secret. The original, the bones and all, is not at the North Pole. He is in Bari.
Visiting the Basilica di San Nicola
The basilica sits in the middle of Bari Vecchia, the tangle of white lanes above the seafront where grandmothers still make orecchiette on the street. Entry is free, and the crypt with the saint’s tomb is open to visitors who dress and behave respectfully, as it remains an active place of worship.
It is also one of the rare shrines shared by Catholic and Orthodox Christians: the crypt holds an Orthodox altar, and Bari has long drawn Orthodox pilgrims from Eastern Europe and beyond. The city celebrates its saint twice a year, quietly on 6 December, and with a huge festival from 7 to 9 May, when a statue of San Nicola is carried down to the harbour and taken out to sea on a decorated boat, retracing the relics’ arrival.
The Festa di San Nicola: how Bari celebrates, 7 to 9 May
If you want to see the city at its most itself, come in May. The Festa di San Nicola falls on the same three days every year, 7 to 9 May, which makes it the easiest festival in Puglia to plan around. It is the story above, staged in the streets: the theft, the voyage, the relics and the manna.
7 May opens with the Corteo Storico, a costumed pageant through the old town that re-enacts the arrival of the relics in 1087. 8 May is the day that matters: the statue of the saint is carried down to the port and taken out along the coast on a decorated boat, escorted by a flotilla, with fireworks over the Adriatic after dark. On 9 May the clergy perform the rito della Santa Manna, drawing the clear liquid from the tomb in the crypt.
It pulls Catholic and Orthodox pilgrims together, which is rare and worth seeing. The honest advice: the seafront is heaving on the 8th, so go down to the port early for the embarkation rather than fighting for a view later and book a bed months ahead. Bari in May is otherwise a quiet, warm and affordable month, as our guide to the best time to visit Puglia explains, and our guide to Puglia’s festivals and sagre sets this feast against the Notte della Taranta and the rest.
If you are building a trip around the city, pair this with our guide to what to do in Bari, the food scene in what to eat in Puglia and easy escapes in day trips from Bari. It is also one of our favourite fun facts about Puglia, and far from the only surprise the region keeps to itself.
Raised in the province of Brindisi, 30 years in Puglia. About this site