They call it the balcony of Apulia, and it is the smallest municipality on the Gargano: from up here, on clear days, you can see the Tavoliere as far as Bari, Monte Vulture, the Daunian mountains and the snow-covered Maiella behind them. The name comes from a man: Herennius, a veteran to whom the emperor had assigned an estate, and from Herennianum came Rignano — the same mechanism that produced Bassano, Carmignano and Polignano. Below the village opens the Paglicci cave, where the paintings on the walls made it possible to date the occupation to the upper Palaeolithic, and beside it was found the first dolmen ever to appear in the Capitanata.
Twelve kilometres from the village, on the low hills that drop towards the plain, stands the rock sanctuary of the Madre di Cristo: it was a grange of the monks of San Giovanni in Lamis, and it is bound to transhumance, because the flocks that came down in winter from Abruzzo and Molise stopped exactly here. On the five Saturdays of Lent the faithful walk down the mule track to it, singing the rosary in dialect. In the village, the baronial palace grew on the ruins of a medieval castle, of which one tower survives out of the five it had. Until 1862 the municipality was called simply Rignano.
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📅 Every year, on 15 and 16 August
On 15 and 16 August Rignano Garganico, a municipality of 2,200 inhabitants in the province of Foggia, celebrates its patroness Maria Santissima Assunta and San Rocco.
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 Rignano Garganico, but an easy day trip away.
