Ascoli Satriano · Candela · Rocchetta Sant'Antonio · Sant'Agata di Puglia · FG
Four municipalities in the province of Foggia. The thread that links them is more historical than thematic: Ascoli Satriano stands on three hills above the Carapelle valley, Candela between the Ofanto and the Carapelle, Sant'Agata at about eight hundred metres in the southern Subappennino Dauno. Along the road the same names come back: the Doria, feudal lords at Candela and later at Rocchetta; and in the Museo Diocesano of Ascoli a cross that comes from Rocchetta. The hypothesised theme, “villages and countryside”, holds only in part: the sources speak of historic centres, castles and finds, almost never of countryside. A caveat: little is known about Rocchetta. The order of the stops is our proposal.
At a glance
Duration. 3 days.
The route
Day 1 — Ascoli Satriano, between Largo Castello and Largo Cattedrale
The centre of Ascoli Satriano occupies three hills above the Carapelle valley, at about 425 metres, according to the Ministry of Culture's record devoted to the historic centre. It is the ancient Ausculum: the same record notes traces from the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, but indicates the Daunian phase, between the 8th and 3rd centuries BC, as the best documented. The Middle Ages passed through it with arms: the record recalls the revolt of 1040 against the Byzantine catepan Niceforo Doceano and the battle on the Ofanto of 4 May 1041, which secured for the Normans the rule of the Puglie. The town has two poles. On one side Largo Castello, with the feudal palace which, according to a 2008 guide produced with the Direzione Regionale per i Beni Culturali e Paesaggistici della Puglia, was founded in the Middle Ages and rebuilt by the Marulli in 1679; the ministerial record explains how they got there: Ascoli, enfeoffed in 1530 to Antonio de Leyva, later passed to the Marulli dukes. On the other Largo Cattedrale, with the Chiesa di Maria Santissima della Natività, which the Soprintendenza's record describes as a Latin cross, with three naves in exposed stone, a dome, a façade with three portals with hanging porches and some reused columns.
The history of the cathedral is a sequence of bishops and building works: Marco Lando enlarged it between 1567 and 1593, in 1871, after an earthquake, Bishop Leonardo Todisco Grande restructured it, between 1980 and 1988 its dome was consolidated. Beside it stand the Palazzo Vescovile, with its hanging garden and frescoed ceilings, and the Seminary, built between 1737 and 1744. As for earthquakes, that of the Vulture, on 23 July 1930, brought destruction and victims; after that of 23 November 1980 the Cathedral, the churches of the Incoronata, the Misericordia and San Rocco, and the Palazzo della Pretura were restored. The record of the historic centre also notes the town's other fracture, emigration, with a peak between 1903 and 1914. The next day one stays in Ascoli, in the former monastery of Santa Maria del Popolo.
Day 2 — Ascoli Satriano, the museum; Candela
In the former monastery of Santa Maria del Popolo the Touring indicates the museum complex born from the merger of the Museo diocesano and the Museo civico archeologico Pasquale Rosario. On the first floor, according to museionline.info, the exhibition “Policromie del sublime” displays the polychrome marbles of the second half of the 4th century BC. The 2009 press release of the Soprintendenza archeologica di Roma describes them: a large krater with the imprint of a gold decoration of ivy leaves, a trapezophoros with two griffins killing a deer, a podanipter with the Nereids carrying the arms of Achilles on sea monsters. Two of these pieces came back from far away: the same press release tells of a court file opened in 1978, the clandestine excavation admitted by a citizen, the griffins and the podanipter bought by the J. Paul Getty Museum and returned in 2007; others had remained for years in the Museo Civico of Foggia. Their original function is debated: the 2009 press release calls them funerary; the study by C. Gasparri and P. G. Guzzo, of 2005, leaves open the question of its title, “tomba o palazzo?”, and hypothesises a palatial building for the trapeza with the griffins. In the museum there is also a room for the mosaics of the villa of Faragola, which a 2007 FAI record describes as a Roman and late antique rural settlement, excavated since 1997, with a summer cenatio and floors in opus sectile; we did not find the current state of the site. On the upper floor, the Museo Diocesano keeps, according to museionline.info, a small silver pax with the Madonna della Purificazione and a cross of ebony and mahogany, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, which came from Rocchetta Sant'Antonio.
Candela, in our proposal, takes up the afternoon. It stands on the hills of San Rocco and San Tommaso, between the Ofanto and the Carapelle, and according to the Ministry's record belongs to the same diocese as Ascoli, Cerignola-Ascoli Satriano. Its first record is a deed of 1066 that names the “castellum quod Candela dicitur”; in 1107 the church of Sant'Angelo outside the walls was donated to the abbey of Cava together with a market privilege. In 1531 the fief passed to Andrea Doria, and the record speaks of a long period of prosperity. What remains is the palazzo Doria, the Chiesa Madre di Santa Maria della Purificazione, the churches of the Purgatorio and San Tommaso, and along Corso Vittorio Emanuele III the palaces of the 19th and 20th centuries. From the Doria the thread leads to Rocchetta.
Day 3 — Rocchetta Sant'Antonio and Sant'Agata di Puglia
For italia.it Rocchetta Sant'Antonio is the last town of the province of Foggia on the border with Campania and Basilicata. About this municipality the open sources say little, and none is a ministerial record. The Castello D'Aquino, according to museionline.info, was built at the beginning of the 16th century at the behest of Ladislao II d'Aquino, marquis of Corato, “more for pleasure and display than for defence”; after the fall of the Aragonese, Ladislao lost the fief, which in 1609 passed to the Doria, and in 1849 the Doria sold the castle to the Piccolo family. Italia.it reports, in the conditional, the hypothesis of a design by Francesco di Giorgio Martini. According to italia.it (which the Touring repeats) the Chiesa Matrice was built between 1754 and 1768, keeps the Madonna del cardellino by Giaquinto and has a bell tower with a small dome covered in majolica; it was originally dedicated to Sant'Antonio Abate, today to the Assunzione.
Sant'Agata di Puglia stands at about eight hundred metres, and the Ministry's record places its first nucleus in the Rocca. The nickname, according to italia.it, comes from the panorama that opens from the castle: “loggia delle Puglie”. The Castello Imperiale, according to the catalogue record, began as a Lombard gastaldate and outpost of the Duchy of Benevento; in 1133 it passed to the Normans, Frederick II between 1239 and 1250 obliged the inhabitants to repair it, Charles I of Anjou in 1279 restructured it “with the Frederician method”, the Orsini and Loffredo turned it into a noble palace; in 2000 the Comune bought it. Below, italia.it describes a historic centre gathered in a single nucleus of alleys, stone houses and portals with coats of arms, and names the churches of San Nicola, Sant'Agata, Sant'Andrea and San Michele Arcangelo. According to the Touring's page (2023), the Bandiera Arancione has as its motivation “the harmony and architectural homogeneity of the historic centre”. The journey, in our proposal, ends here, at about eight hundred metres.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 13 defects corrected · not approved