Cagnano Varano

The first name the sources record is Canianum, around the twelfth century: some trace it to the gens Cania, some to a Canius with the suffix -anus, and others to Ca-Iani, the house of Janus, the most venerated of the pagan gods of the promontory. The «Varano» came much later, and it is a claim: in 1862 the town council resolved to add it in memory of the early city that stood by the lake of that name, from which the first inhabitants of the village were said to have come, and so as not to be confused with the other Cagnani of Italy. That city would be Uria, which Pliny and Strabo name in describing the area where Lake Varano lies today: the southern shore of the lake was the ancient coast of a gulf. What the documents actually say is simpler: from the fifth century the barbarian invasions emptied the coastal centres of the Gargano, and people gathered further inland into small communities, the casali, one of which is Cagnano; and the Byzantines, who ruled here long, revived the abandoned places by encouraging immigration from the Balkans.

Between the sea and the lake runs a tongue of sand they call the Isola di Varano: some ten kilometres from Capojale to Foce Varano, eight hundred metres wide on average and no more than five above sea level. The western half belongs to Cagnano, the eastern to Ischitella, and nearly all the village's beaches are there; on 11 December 2009 seven sperm whales stranded on it. Inland the rock is limestone and the water goes underground: gorges, swallow-holes which here are called grave, quarries and caves. The best known is the grotto of San Michele, a place of worship for centuries and frequented since the Stone Age; and in the grotto of Tommasone, in the valley of San Giovanni, certain graffiti confirm that people were here as early as the upper Palaeolithic. From the shore of the lake to the top of Coppa Ferrata the comune rises 913 metres.