Tradition has it that the village was founded by veterans of the sixth crusade: taken prisoner in the Holy Land and freed by Frederick II in 1228, they followed the emperor to Apulia and settled on this hill. Just outside the centre stands the sanctuary of the Madonna of Josafat, built in the sixteenth century on the ruins of an abbey, and inside it a late Byzantine wooden relief that, by that same tradition, the founders brought back with them from the Holy Land.
In the friary beside the sanctuary Padre Pio of Pietrelcina stayed between 1905 and 1906, and again in 1918, before settling at San Giovanni Rotondo. The day after the feast of San Liberato, in August, the Gioco della Jaletta is held: the horsemen of the village's seven quarters must slip a pointed stick into the slot beneath a tub full of water.
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📅 Every year, on 19 August, with the Gioco della Jaletta on the 20th
On 19 August San Marco la Catola, a municipality of 1,082 inhabitants in the province of Foggia, celebrates San Liberato martire; on the 20th the riders of the seven districts compete in the Gioco della Jaletta.
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 San Marco la Catola, but an easy day trip away.
