Faeto

Faeto lies fifty kilometers west of Foggia on the regional border with Campania, set on a Monti Dauni ridge. Together with its three-kilometer neighbour Celle di San Vito it forms the only Franco-Provençal linguistic minority in southern Italy, recognised by Italian law 482 of 1999. The dialect, known locally as faetano, descends from Provençal colonists settled in the Daunia by Charles I of Anjou after his victory at Benevento in 1266; he stationed garrisons in the strategic highlands and the colonists held. It is still used in daily conversation by an aging population of 616 residents.

Monte Cornacchia rises just north of the village, and old sheep tracks climb to it through beech forest, linking the settled ridge to the wild high ground above it. The municipal salume, prosciutto di Faeto, is cured at altitude and sold across the province as the high-mountain Puglian cured ham. A garrison outpost, a surviving minority language, and a cured meat named for the place: what remains at Faeto is the trace of a fourteenth-century military decision, still spoken and still eaten.