In 1461 the village was razed to the ground by George Kastrioti Skanderbeg; and it was the Greek-Albanian refugees who had come with him, fleeing the Ottoman advance in the Balkans, who founded it again. First, though, they had stopped three kilometres away, inside the territory of Castelnuovo della Daunia, where they stayed from 1468: living together with the local people never worked, and it went badly for some fifty years, until in the sixteenth century the Albanians left those houses and came to settle the nearby hamlet, then called Sanctus Petrus de Castelluccio.
Today Casalvecchio is a bilingual village: the municipal acts are written in two languages, the streets have double names, the main street is dedicated to Skanderbeg and the middle school to Girolamo de Rada, and even the sign at the entrance greets you in Albanian. The Byzantine rite has been lost, the language has not, although by now it is mostly the old who speak it: hence a language desk, which has put together a comparative dictionary of the speech of this village and of Chieuti. At funerals they used to perform the vajtim, the lament sung in Albanian by a woman or a group of women. The «di Puglia» in the name dates from 1862, added so as not to be confused with Casalvecchio Siculo.
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📅 Every year, on the third Sunday and the third Monday of May
On the third Sunday and the third Monday of May Casalvecchio di Puglia, a municipality of 1,939 inhabitants in the province of Foggia, celebrates its patroness the Madonna delle Grazie and its co-patron San Nicola di Bari.
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 Casalvecchio di Puglia, but an easy day trip away.
