Although it’s a leading commercial and industrial center, the busy port city of Bari has much to charm the tourists who pass through it on their way to Greece or ports on the eastern Adriatic. It was of surprisingly little importance in ancient times, and remained a backwater until it was captured by Robert Guiscard in 1071 and used by the Byzantines as their main base in southern Italy. From 1324, it was an almost independent fief, becoming part of the kingdom of Naples in 1558. Today, Bari seems almost like two separate towns, with its picturesque old quarter and historic attractions crowded into a maze of narrow streets at the end of a peninsula, and the spacious new town of broad avenues stretching to its south. Busy Corso Vittorio Emanuele II separates the new town from the old .(by planetware )