Celle di San Vito

Celle and neighbouring Faeto are the only Franco-Provençal island in peninsular Italy, and their origin explains both names. Between the end of 1274 and the beginning of 1275 Charles of Anjou gathered a Franco-Provençal community inside the fortress of Lucera, facing the Muslim colony that Frederick II had settled there; perhaps it was that uneasy coexistence that drove some 140 families to leave for the upper valley of the Celone, where they camped among the beech woods — Faeto — and in the abandoned rooms of a monastery, the little cells: Celle.

Celle is by far the least populated municipality in Apulia. Franco-Provençal was the prevailing speech here until the early twentieth century, and in the nineteen-eighties there were still inhabitants who spoke nothing else. In the old town hall is the museum of Franco-Provençal peasant culture. And at Brantford, in Ontario, over 2000 people have ties with this village: more than ten times its inhabitants.