Faeto · Celle di San Vito · Castelluccio Valmaggiore · Orsara di Puglia · Troia · Lucera · Torremaggiore · FG
Seven towns in the province of Foggia, in the Subappennino Dauno. What links them, in the sources, is two things: a road and a frontier. The road is the one that the Ministry of Culture's records call the Traiana and that the sources route through Celle, Castelluccio and Troia, and that some scholars also place near Faeto. The frontier is the one marked, one after another, by the tower and the walls wanted by the catepan Basil Boioannes, by the Saracens settled by Frederick II at Lucera and by the Provençal soldiers sent against them by Charles I of Anjou. It must be said that the four routes of the 2015 regional map-guide from which it comes were tied to a programme of that year: no source read says that they still exist.
At a glance
Duration. 4 days.
The route
Day 1 — Faeto and Celle di San Vito
Faeto stands at 866 metres, in the southern Subappennino Dauno, and the municipality describes the settlement gathered “like a bird's nest”. Here the inhabitants speak Franco-Provençal, which Graziadio Isaia Ascoli recognised as an autonomous Romance language. The reason is a war. According to the Ministry's record for the historic centre, in 1269 Charles I of Anjou sent Provençal militias to garrison the area against the Saracens of Lucera; they settled first on Monte Castiglione, near the fortification of Crepacore, then moved near the church of Santa Maria and the monastery of San Salvatore, attested in the 11th century and today surviving only in the documents. In the Casa del Capitano, a building of the Aragonese period with mullioned windows, is the Museo Etnografico delle Comunità Francoprovenzali; opening hours are not given. The italia.it portal points out a wood of about 150 hectares, with beeches, oaks and downy oaks, and windmills along the walks. Near the Casale di San Vito some scholars recognise the Mutatio Aquilonis, a station of the Traiana: it is a hypothesis.
Celle di San Vito is the other half of this linguistic island, which the municipality calls “Daunia arpitana” and which the State has recognised as a minority since 1999. The Ministry's record tells that the Provençal colonists occupied the abandoned cells of a small coenobium, fortified them and brought the land under cultivation. To the north opens the Arco dei Provenzali; the Vicolo Ospedale used to be called “Rrùe de lo Ggjudéj”, Alley of the Jews, in memory of a Jewish presence. The name “San Vito” was added after Unification. Then the road changed: with the end of transhumance and the shift of trade to the Tavoliere, writes the record, the village emptied. The municipality recalls that the Traiana and the Via Francigena cross its territory to the south, towards the next day's stage.
Day 2 — Castelluccio Valmaggiore and Orsara di Puglia
At Castelluccio you arrive beneath the tower, 20 metres high according to the municipality, a “strategic observatory over the Via Traiana” above the valley of the Celone. The Ministry's record links it to the defensive reorganisation of Basil Boioannes against the Lombard Duchy of Benevento: from here the road was controlled and the nascent Troia protected. The municipality points out in the tower a metamuseum on the Battle of Hannibal; opening hours and access not verified. Next to it, the Chiesa Madre of San Giovanni Battista was rebuilt in 1958 and keeps its marble high altar of 1766. The Piscero wash-house has a cross vault of 1927: the water reaches it through a tunnel forty metres long. In the mid-16th century, with Celle and Faeto, the town was a fief of Anna Piccolomini.
The Ministry's record links the birth of Orsara to the Grotta di Sant'Angelo, the “Spelunca Ursariae” mentioned in 1024. Here too the frontier returns: in 1229, the municipality recalls, Pope Gregory IX entrusted the abbey to the Spanish knights of Calatrava, perhaps, writes the record, as an anti-Swabian garrison. From the devotion to San Michele came the two fairs granted in 1335 by Robert of Anjou, on 8 May and 29 September; from 1524 to 1806 the fief belonged to the Guevara. A border land on paper too: from 1861 to 1927 Orsara belonged to the province of Avellino. On 17 and 18 August 1462 the people of Orsara surrendered to Ferdinand I; in the same days, on the 18th, according to the municipality of Faeto, near San Vito the king defeated the French at the place called Lago di Sangue. From here the map-guide went down to Troia.
Day 3 — Troia
Troia stands on a height at 439 metres which, for the Ministry's record, is crossed by the road later called the Traiana; the same record lists it as a stage of the Via Francigena. In 1019 Boioannes repopulated it and girded it with walls against the Lombards; in 1093, 1115, 1120 and 1127 councils presided over by four popes were held there, and in 1127 Honorius II granted it the “Charta Libertatum”. The minor door of the cathedral, Oderisio's bronze door, recalls according to the municipality the resistance of 1139, before Roger II subdued it. In 1229 Frederick II razed it to the ground and banished its inhabitants, who returned in 1266, after Charles of Anjou's victory over Manfred. The cathedral, entirely of stone according to the FAI, has construction dates that disagree in the sources, and we do not give them here. In the Museo del Tesoro, in Piazza Episcopio, italia.it points out three Exultet rolls dated between the 12th and 13th centuries, ivories and silverware. The next day, the Saracens.
Day 4 — Lucera and Torremaggiore
Lucera occupies three hills, Albano, Belvedere and Monte Sacro; on the Albano hill, which the FAI indicates as the acropolis of the Roman city, stands the fortress. The Ministry's record follows its history from the Iron Age to the Latin colony of 314 BC; the Ministry dates the amphitheatre between 27 BC and AD 14, about 130 metres by 95, commissioned by M. Vecilius Campus, a local magistrate, and the page, undated, gives it as temporarily closed. The reason for the journey, however, is medieval: between 1233 and 1246 Frederick II settled there Saracen colonies from Sicily and Tunisia, and a fortified palace. In 1300, on the initiative of Giovanni Pipino da Barletta, the colony was eliminated and replaced by colonists from the neighbouring regions and from Provence; Charles II founded the new cathedral of Santa Maria and the church of San Francesco. Around the Swabian palace Charles I had already had the curtain wall built, completed in 1283 according to the FAI, 900 metres long with 22 towers according to the Touring Club. The Museo Civico “G. Fiorelli” is in Palazzo De Nicastri-Cavalli; italia.it gives its opening hours on an undated page.
Torremaggiore, at about 170 metres, was born, for the Ministry's record, from a Benedictine monastery founded around 1000 to control a road junction, where the via Lucerina crossed the road to Civitate. Frederick II confiscated the casale because of its closeness to Lucera. In 1255 Fiorentino, a city of the Swabian party, was destroyed, and the refugees settled in the Codacchio quarter, around the castle and San Nicola. At Castel Fiorentino, according to the municipality and an article by F. Delle Donne (SPOLIA, 2022; only the bibliographic record read), Frederick II died on 13 December 1250; its present state is not documented in the sources read. The ducal castle revealed during restoration a central square Norman tower; the de Sangro governed the town from 1382 to 1806, and in 1627 an earthquake destroyed the abbey. The title of the 2015 route, “Il destino di un Imperatore”, is not explained by any source: the link with Frederick II is our own reading, and the journey ends here.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 21 defects corrected · not approved