Faeto, Italian comune
Faeto is a small commune in the Province of Foggia, in the Apulia region of Italy, set on a hilltop in the Subappennino Dauno. Its narrow lanes and stone houses cluster around a central square, with beech forests covering the hills that surround the village on all sides.
The village took shape in the Middle Ages as a mountain settlement, peopled by communities that are believed to have migrated from Francoprovencal-speaking areas of southern France. This origin left the place with a language and a way of life that set it apart from the Apulian villages around it.
Faeto is one of the few places in Italy where Francoprovencal is still spoken in everyday life, a language related to French and Occitan. Older residents use it in conversation, and a visitor walking through the village may catch words and phrases that sound unlike anything else heard in the rest of the country.
The village is best reached by car along winding mountain roads, as there is no direct train or bus connection. Once there, the whole place is easy to explore on foot since it is small and the paths leading into the surrounding forest are well-marked.
Although Faeto sits deep in Apulia, the language that can still be heard in its lanes sounds closer to an Alpine dialect than to anything from southern Italy. The Francoprovencal spoken here is related to the variety found in the Aosta Valley and parts of Switzerland, not to the speech of the Apulian villages nearby.
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