Mattinata · Rignano Garganico · Apricena · San Paolo di Civitate · FG
This journey comes down from the Gargano towards the plain: Mattinata, Rignano Garganico and Apricena are among the municipalities of the Parco Nazionale del Gargano, while San Paolo di Civitate is, for the Regione Puglia, “a small town of the Tavoliere”. It must be said honestly that the theme “promontory and plain” holds only as a geographical description: no source read links the four towns in a single route, and the regional map-guide of 2015 touches only Apricena. The most solid thread the sources offer is another one, the long time of human presence: the Park's records document the necropolis of Monte Saraceno, the burials and paintings of Grotta Paglicci, the chipped tools of Pirro Nord; at San Paolo di Civitate a museum tells of a frontier community between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC.
At a glance
Duration. 4 days.
The route
Day 1 — Mattinata, the new village and the monks' mountain
Mattinata lies, according to the Park Authority, on a hill at the edge of a plain of olive trees, about 78 metres above the sea, with a grid layout. It is a young town: the record of the Carta dei Beni Culturali, in the Ministry's catalogue, has the present village born in the 18th century, recalls the dry-stone huts of the middle of that century and explains that until 1955 it was a hamlet of Monte Sant'Angelo; then came strong building growth linked to tourism. The Park observes that the settlement lacks buildings of historical and architectural importance, and the oldest of its palazzi, Palazzo Mantuano, dates from 1840. History lies outside the town. In Roman times, for the Park, the port exported oil and wine, and near the small harbour the remains of a villa have come to light. The Museo civico, founded in 1982 and opened in 1990, holds grave goods from the necropolises and blocks with dinosaur footprints found in the port, where they served as breakwaters: they came from a quarry at San Marco in Lamis. On the height of Monte Saraceno, 260 metres, the Park describes earth graves with grave goods of Illyrian fibulae, amber and glass paste; the name, the Park reports, refers to a tradition that placed a Saracen cemetery there, and between the two wars there were military posts up there. Higher up, on the 872 metres of Monte Sacro, stand the ruins of the abbey of the SS. Trinità: for the ministerial record a three-naved church with a semicircular apse, a chapel, a kitchen and a “lamione”, now owned by the municipality; the FAI notes traces of frescoes there. The next day, in our proposal, one goes to Rignano Garganico.
Day 2 — Rignano Garganico, the balcony over the plain
The Park calls the town “Balcone delle Puglie”; from the La Ripa viewpoint the eye runs over the Tavoliere and reaches the Adriatic and the Maiella. The town appears in a document of 1029, the diploma of the captain Cristoforo that names the mountain “Guardie Riniani” as the boundary with the lands of a Benedictine monastery. The historic centre has cave houses; the oldest core, the La Rotte quarter, is rock-cut architecture, with a small bas-relief of San Michele; the external stairs are called “mugnali”. For the Park “the most important historical period for the town is the customs period”. The Locazione di Arignano was one of the 23 districts of the Regia Dogana della Mena delle pecore, the only one named after a Gargano town, with 17 poste; the name of the customs office appears from 1447. The Corigliano family held the barony until 1835, and in 1869 the Portagrande was pulled down. After the peak of 3,328 inhabitants in 1961 the population fell because of emigration. In the Vallone di Settepenne, the Grotta Paglicci preserves, for the Park, horses and ibexes painted in red ochre, handprints and two burials, dated to between 25,000 and 23,000 years ago, of a youth of about fifteen and a woman of about twenty, sprinkled with ochre; no source read says whether and how it can be visited. Deep time continues.
Day 3 — Apricena, the town remade after the earthquake
Apricena lies 73 metres above the sea, the Park writes. According to the Park Authority, Frederick II made it a demesne land and stayed there at least thirteen times; in 1222 he granted it civic use rights over Sannicandro, Castelpagano and Civitate and a market on Wednesdays. On 30 July 1627 an earthquake destroyed almost the whole town and killed about nine hundred people; in the reconstruction the mother church of San Martino e Santa Lucia was built. In the historic centre, according to the Park, the clock tower is among the few old buildings that survived. The Museo civico, in Corso Generale Torelli, gathers mainly Daunian objects of the 7th-4th century BC and a Roman sundial. Around it, the territory reads through abandonments: Castel Pagano, destroyed in 1137 by Lothair III and rebuilt by Frederick II with a Saracen garrison, emptied from the early 17th century, the Park writes, probably for lack of water, and its inhabitants moved down to Apricena; the monastery of San Giovanni in Piano, founded in 1050 by Petronio count of Lesina and later passed to the Celestines, is abandoned. At Pirro Nord the quarries have yielded chipped stone tools that the Park dates to between 1.3 and 1.6 million years ago, with over a hundred species of vertebrates, including the sabre-toothed tiger. In the Grotta dei Graffiti at Campo di Pietra one can read incisions interpreted as “a hut and a squat mushroom”. The next day one goes to San Paolo di Civitate, the town that bears the name of that nearby city.
Day 4 — San Paolo di Civitate, on the border
San Paolo di Civitate lies, for the Regione, on a hill that looks towards the Gargano and the first heights of the Monti Dauni. Near the bridge over the Fortore, which the Regione lists among the places of the municipality, in 1053 the battle of Civitate was fought, in which according to the same page the Normans defeated the papal troops, beginning their rule in the South. In 1640, writes the municipality's Art Bonus record, Andrea Gonzaga, duke of Guastalla, had the convent of Sant'Antonio built for the Padri Zoccolanti; suppressed in the 19th century and handed over to the municipality in 1867, it is today the Museo civico archeologico. In the covered cloister are the remains of a building of the 1st century BC, and on the first floor the exhibition “TIATI. Membra disiecta” tells of a frontier community between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC. A local publication reports the excavation of the amphitheatre of Teanum, announced in 2020; the current state of the site is not verified. The journey, in our proposal, ends here.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 18 defects corrected · not approved