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Peschici, ninety meters above sea level and about 20 km from Vieste, is a Mediterranean village of unparalleled beauty with its little houses perched on the living rock and its Norman castle overlooking the sea.
Awarded the Blue Flag several times, its long strip of sandy beach is a popular destination for an ever-increasing number of tourists every year. The municipality is part of the Gargano National Park.
The castle, the jewel in the crown of the village, of Byzantine origins, was destroyed by the troops of Venice and rebuilt in the 13th century by Frederick II of Swabia. Today it is restored and can be visited, and houses an exhibition of torture instruments.
Among the monuments to visit in the historic center are the Abbey of Santa Maria di Càlena, built in the 9th century and remodeled in the Apulian Romanesque style, and the Church of Sant’Elia, built in the 13th century, in the shape of a Latin cross, which has a rough façade embellished with two rose windows and an unfinished bell tower, without a ceiling.
Among the local legends and stories we have the “Pupa”, symbol of a declaration of love. Entered the Peschici culture towards the end of 1800, it was used to declare one’s love to the loved one. Placed behind the window or door of the beloved, which
If she accepted the courtship, she withdrew the Pupa, otherwise there was no hope for the suitor.
Meanwhile, another legend tells that one day Aphrodite, Goddess of beauty, lost one of her shoes and that, having noticed it, a man reached out to pick it up, but immediately the divine shoe transformed into a flower of unparalleled beauty, all to avoid being touched by the hands of a mortal. That flower was an orchid. Gargano is famous in the world for the variety of species of Orchids present in its territory (more than 80).
A typical presence on the coast of Peschici are the trabucchi, architectures for fishing passing fish composed of wooden poles that are intertwined with wires and pulleys. Peschici boasts seven of them, but above all it boasts the only trabucchisti alive, capable of building and preserving their memory. This type of fishing has been practiced for a long time and takes advantage of the migrations of schools of fish from the north to the south of the Adriatic. Today, several trabucchi have become characteristic restaurants where you can taste freshly caught fish.
In memory of a centuries-old history of attacks and incursions, there remain today some coastal towers erected in the second half of the sixteenth century to defend the territory from pirates and corsairs. Among the surviving towers, the Torre di Sfinale stands out.
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