Castelluccio dei Sauri · Bovino · Deliceto · Accadia · FG
Four towns in the province of Foggia, all built high up: a study by the Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria describes Castelluccio dei Sauri as a settlement stretched along a ridge and Deliceto as a hilltop settlement, the Ministry of Culture's record calls Accadia a ridge town, and the Provincia places Bovino at about 650 metres of altitude, with a view over the Cervaro valley. The thread that links them is Bovino: Castelluccio was donated to its Church, its lords the Guevara bought the fief, one of its bishops revived the sanctuary of the Consolazione near Deliceto. The second thread is the ground that moves: ISPRA lists all four among the municipalities damaged by the 1980 earthquake. The theme we had started from, “villages and woods”, holds little: the woods appear in the sources as names, not as places described. It is a journey for those who read towns through their churches, their cracks and their documents.
At a glance
Duration. 4 days.
The route
Day 1 — Castelluccio dei Sauri
The town stands on a ledge of the Subappennino dauno, on the right of the Cervaro stream, south-west of Foggia, according to the Ministry of Culture's record; the Reggio Calabria study adds that the ridge is crossed by the Regio Tratturo Cerignola–Ponte di Bovino, a transhumance route. Before the houses come the stones: in the locality of Sterparo, on the boundary with the territory of Bovino, the Comune places an ancient place of worship with numerous anthropomorphic stelae from the Copper Age. The first emerged in the autumn of 1954 from deep ploughing; today more than thirty are known, usually about sixty centimetres high and less than ten thick, in limestone or sandstone, and some are kept in the Museo civico of Bovino. The casale appears in 1118, when Count Roberto II di Loretello gave it to the Church of Bovino; Frederick II made it a royal farm, Charles I in 1268 ordered it to be fortified. The reason for today's town lies in a void: from 1390 the casale declined, it was depopulated between 1415 and 1446 and was repopulated by sixty Albanian families of the Greek rite; in 1549, according to the Comune and the Ministry, the viceroy Pietro di Toledo had it burned. In 1564 Giovanni Guevara, lord of Bovino, bought it, and the fief remained with the Guevara until 1860. The mother church of the SS. Salvatore, closed after the earthquake of 23 November 1980, was reopened for worship on 8 August 1992; the Madonna delle Grazie, rebuilt and inaugurated in 1971, holds a 16th-century painting that some scholars, the Comune writes, attribute to a pupil of Raphael. Outside the centre, in the locality of Lamia, there is the well that tradition links to Hannibal's troops: the Comune warns that no certain document confirms it, but recalls that, when the road was built, its route was diverted so as not to destroy it. The next day one goes up to where those stelae ended up.
Day 2 — Bovino and the Consolazione
Bovino is the ancient Vibinum, writes the Provincia di Foggia, and its finds are in the museum. It had its period of greatest splendour as a fief of the Guevara; their Palazzo Ducale stands on the ruins of a Roman fortress, already rebuilt under Frederick II, and the Touring Club mentions a cylindrical Norman tower at the entrance. The Romanesque Cathedral, with its façade of 1231 according to the Provincia, was largely damaged by the earthquake of 1930; the Provincia also records that of 1851 as serious for Bovino; castle and cathedral are national monuments. The Touring notes in the Museo diocesano a Martyrdom of San Sebastiano attributed to Mattia Preti. On Bovino we have not read municipal sources: the rest should be checked on site. Then, in our proposal, the sanctuary of Santa Maria della Consolazione, which the Comune of Deliceto places about 5 km from the town: according to the Comune the first Christians took refuge in a wooded area around a church of San Pietro in Vincoli, from which the valley takes its name; towards the end of the 15th century, according to the Comune, an Augustinian hermitage led by Beato Felice da Corsano arose there. Suppressed in 1653 by Innocent X, it revived in the 18th century thanks to a bishop of Bovino; in 1744 Saint Alfonso Maria de' Liguori settled there as the first superior, and it was the third historic house of the Redemptorists. Here San Gerardo Maiella carried out his apostolate, the same saint to whom Castelluccio dedicates a chapel. Access is free. The following day one enters the town.
Day 3 — Deliceto
The Comune places Deliceto at 620 metres; from the rocky terrace of the Aia S. Antonio the municipal record points to the view over the Tavoliere, the Gargano and the heights of Basilicata. The convent of Sant'Antonio was built in 1510 on land donated by the marquis Giambattista Piccolomini; the church, Baroque with three naves, bears the inscription of 1660, and keeps a pipe organ by Domenico Antonio Rossi of 1775. The Franciscans stayed there until 1811, when Joachim Murat suppressed them. The castle, which the municipal record dates back to the 9th century, bears above the entrance the Piccolomini d'Aragona coat of arms dated 1444 and has a tower about thirty metres high; in 1902 it was declared a national monument. For years, however, it has not been open to visitors because of works, and the page is from 2023. The Albanians come back here too: the chapel of the Madonna di Loreto, built between 1532 and 1539, was wanted so that they could celebrate the Greek rite there, and beside it has an ossuary with the remains of the plague victims of the 16th century. The church of San Rocco was born in 1656, after another plague. The reason for the cracks is given by ISPRA: Deliceto was among the municipalities hardest hit in 1962, in December 1983 a landslide struck the Gavitelle district and from 1986 subsidence opened up because of collapses of artificial cavities underground; the Reggio Calabria study points out buttresses and connecting vaults between the houses, safeguards against earthquakes. The next day one goes where those safeguards were not enough.
Day 4 — Accadia
Accadia, according to the Ministry's record, is a ridge town on the left bank of the Frugna stream, and falls within the Natura 2000 site called “Accadia - Deliceto”. An edict of 969, cited by the Ministry, already names it among the centres liable to the synodal tax. In 1462, in its territory, Ferrante of Aragon defeated John of Anjou: the episode is on a panel of the bronze door made for the Triumphal Arch of Castel Nuovo and now kept in the Palazzo Reale of Naples, and the Torre dell'Orologio in piazza Ferro has commemorated it since 1883. The heart of the journey is the rione Fossi, houses carved out of caves dug in the tuff. The Reggio Calabria study describes it as the oldest nucleus, with the 11th-century church of Santi Pietro e Paolo at the top, and explains that Accadia was the only centre in the area abandoned after a 20th-century earthquake (the sources disagree on the year) even though it could have been rebuilt: it was the residents who decided to leave, after the shoring with arches and buttresses. According to ISPRA the district had been listed for consolidation or relocation since 1933. The Comune's website presents a regeneration project for the district funded by the PNRR. Outside the town, according to the Ministry, Santa Maria dei Teutoni stands near the Gole and the Paduli wood, which the website of the GAL Meridaunia, visitmontidauni.it, places about 5 km from the town. The journey, in our proposal, ends here, among the abandoned caves.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 10 defects corrected · not approved