LUCERA, a city of Italy, in the province of Foggia, on a hill in the midst of the Apulian plain, lies 10 miles westnorth-west of Foggia. Although a busy and flourishing place, with 14,014 inhabitants in 1871, Lucera is mainly of historical interest. The cathedral, erected on the ruins of the magnificent mosque, is a fine Romanesque building with Gothic features; and the castle, whose imposing ruins still crown the hill to the north of the town, was formerly the grandest of all the strongholds possessed by the Hohenstaufen emperors to the south of the Alps.

By a Greek tradition the foundation of Luceria was assigned to Diomede, and the statue in its temple of Minerva passed as the authentic Palladium; but the place would seem to be really of Oscan rather than Daunian origin. The Romans were marching to the relief of Luceria when they suffered the defeat at the Caudine Forks; they effected its capture in 320 B.c.; and when they recovered it in 314 they slew a great part of the inhabitants, and introduced a powerful body of colonists. During the Second Punic War the city was the headquarters of the Apulian campaigns. It continued to exist as a place of some mark down through the empire, and is mentioned by Pliny as a colony. Destroyed (663 A.υ.) by the emperor Constans, who had recovered it from the Lombards, it was shortly after restored, and in 1227 it was raised to more than its former prosperity by Frederick II., who settled there a great body of his Saracen followers from Sicily, and thus increased its population to about 77,000. The Mohammedan colony, however, was brought to ruin by the hostility of Charles I. and II. of Anjou. Previous to 1806 Lucera was the administrative centre of the two provinces Basilicata and Molise. See W. Lang, in Im Neuen Reich, Dec. 1877.