The pheasant on the arms is a misunderstanding. The name comes not from phasianus but, almost certainly, from a certain Fadius plus the usual suffix -anus: in the old charters the town is Fajano, Faxano, Fachano, Fayano. The bird on the shield, moreover, is to some not a pheasant at all but a faso, the wood pigeon that drank at ponds now vanished. Fasano is in any case born of a flight: when Egnazia, the Messapian and Roman city on the sea, was abandoned after the invasions, the refugees scattered inland, and in 1088 founded the casale of Santa Maria di Fajano. Some did not go so far: they stopped in the lame, the gullies cut into the limestone, and carved whole villages out of the soft tuff, with oil presses and crypts frescoed in the Byzantine manner.
Below, on the coast, Egnazia still sleeps, with its harbour cut into the rock and a museum that tells two thousand years of Adriatic trade. Above, the Selva di Fasano is the cool hill of liberty villas where the gentry of Puglia have summered for a century. In between, the monumental olive trees and the fortified masserie turned into some of the most celebrated resorts in Italy, each with its trappeto dug beneath the ground. From the fourteenth century Fasano belonged to the Knights of Malta, and the cross on its arms is not a grant but a boast of independence: removed under fascism, it was put back by mayor Maria Chieco Bianchi. Every year the Scamiciata replays the victory over the Turkish pirates of 1678. In 2024 the G7 was held here, at Savelletri; Alberobello and Ostuni are ten minutes away.
Chiesa di San Francesco da Paola · Chiesa di San Giuseppe · Chiesa di San Nicola and 3 more
Burrata di Andria
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Next up: Saint John the Baptist and Our Lady of Pozzo Faceto, patrons remembered with the Scamiciata, Sunday 20 June
Nearest airport: Brindisi, 53 km away
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📅 Every year, on the third Sunday of June, with the historical re-enactment of the Scamiciata
Fasano celebrates Saint John the Baptist and Saint Mary of Pozzo Faceto on the third Sunday of June; the cult of the Madonna di Pozzo Faceto is tied to a local legend, and every year a glorious moment of the town's past is re-enacted with the traditional Scamiciata.
Chiesa di San Francesco da Paola The seventeenth-century Minim church in Fasano, beside the hospital, with a painted dome and an 18th-century p Chiesa di San Giuseppe The twentieth-century church beside Fasano's mother church, now a cultural hall, with Tiffany windows. Chiesa di San Nicola The sixteenth-century church on piazza Ciaia in Fasano, at the heart of the patronal feast and the Santi Medic Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Abate The Observant friars' church in Fasano, with its dome, onion-spired bell tower and frescoed 1600s cloister. Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Fasano, but an easy day trip away.
