East coast of Italy?

I'm planning my first trip to Italy for the spring of 2005. I want to see Rome
and Venice for sure. However, my trip to Europe was to some of the Greek
Islands, and it's hard to pass up the opportunity to visit one I didn't have a
chance to visit by taking one of the many ferries from Italy to the island of
Corfu. The most logical way to make the trip would be to take the ferry from
Venice to Corfu since I'll be in Venice anyway. However, it's a 24-hour trip,
which is a long time to waste on a boat in the middle of a great vacation.
Ferries also depart from other ports on the east coast of Italy that make the
trip a lot shorter, but they are places that never pop up while discussing
tourism in Italy (i.e. Brindisi, Bari, Ancona).

Anyway, my point is that I don't want to take a train all the way to one of
these other port cities just to shorten the duration of the ferry trip if
there's nothing else to do or see in those places. What, if anything, do these
other port cities on the east coast of Italy have to offer?