Castelluccio Valmaggiore

The village had the shape of an isosceles triangle, closed not by walls but by the houses themselves, which were fortified: at the base stood the two gates, the Pozzo gate to the west and the Piscero gate to the east, and at the apex, the most exposed point, the Byzantines raised around the year one thousand the castle that gave everything its name, Castrum Vallis Maioris. Its tower remains, twenty metres high, of local stone bound with litocolla, a mortar of lime alone without sand; the first floor could be entered only through a balcony window, by an outside stair.

From 1440 Castelluccio belonged to the barony of Val Maggiore together with Faeto and Celle di San Vito, but language did not follow the boundaries of the fief: those two villages still speak Franco-Provençal, while here the dialect is Daunian-Irpinian, and of the linguistic island only a few words remain. Another thread, though, held for a long time: until 1890 the clergy of Castelluccio had the right to administer a small church that stands in the territory of Faeto, along the drove road where the flocks passed.