Byzantium loses Bari

April 16, 1071

After a three-year siege, Robert Guiscard captured the last Byzantine stronghold in Italy. Bari's fall ended five centuries of imperial presence in the peninsula. Southern Italy was now entirely Norman. Within weeks the Normans would be crossing the Adriatic to attack the Byzantine empire itself in earnest. The loss of Italy severed one of Byzantium's oldest connections to the western Mediterranean world.