Adelfia, città della fratellanza

Adelfia is a town in the metropolitan city of Bari of about 16 thousand inhabitants. It is a municipality born in 1927 from the merger of two distinct municipalities: Canneto di Bari and Montrone. To seal the union, the name Adelfia was chosen from the Greek adelphòs, meaning brotherhood.

The old town of Montrone was built in 982, founded by a Byzantine merchant, a certain Roni Sensech, fleeing from Bari under the pursuit of Lombard troops. Thus was born the village of Mons Roni. Among its first inhabitants, there was a Byzantine priest who painted a Nativity in one of the three caves of the place. In correspondence with that cave in 1086 the chapel called Madonna del Principio was built.

In 1390 it became the possession of the notable from Bari Nicolò Dottula who endowed the village with a turreted castle, the nucleus of the current marquisal palace.

The second city that forms Adelfia is Canneto. During the military campaign conducted by Roberto il Guiscardo and aimed at the conquest of Bari (1067-1071), Giosuè Galtieri from Messina together with some companions found a reed bed from which he could procure large quantities of reeds, with which more than 200 huts needed by the army. When Bari capitulated, Roberto, who became its duke, rewarded Giosuè Galtieri by giving him the fief of the area.

Galtieri married Beatrice Curcelli from Taranto. One of their daughters, Stella Beatrice, married the Neapolitan Alfonso Barbiano, who thus obtained the barony of Canneto and built the baronial palace there. In 1186 the chapel of the Madonna della Stella was built as an ex voto for the unexpected recovery of Stella Beatrice.