Adelfia: feasts and traditions

Adelfia is a town of about 16,300 people in the metropolitan city of Bari, in Apulia, set at 154 metres some 15 km by road from the regional capital. It has two souls: the old quarters of Montrone and Canneto, two separate historic centers divided by the Mungivacca-Putignano railway, which were merged into a single municipality by a decree of 29 September 1927. The new name comes from the Greek adelphòs, "brother", a nod to the brotherhood between the two villages, and the coat of arms granted in 1929 combines both their emblems.

The area was already inhabited before the Romans, as tombs from the 6th-5th century BC show. According to the local historian Don Cataldo de Nicolai, Montrone grew up in 982 around a Byzantine merchant on the run, while Canneto, tradition says, began as the winter camp of Robert Guiscard's soldiers during the siege of Bari in the 11th century. Both passed through many feudal families, from the Acquaviva to the Bianchi Dottula and the De Nicolai, until feudalism was abolished in 1806. In 1799 Montrone went through the darkest chapter of its history, when French troops killed 83 people in reprisal for the killing of a trumpeter.

In Montrone, the mother church, built around 1711 and dedicated to Saint Nicholas of Bari, holds the 18th-century statue of Saint Tryphon (San Trifone), the town's patron, and a painting attributed to Titian; nearby stand the church of Santa Maria del Principio, dating from 1086, and the marquises' palace. Canneto has a 19-metre Norman tower, a national monument since 1920, the chapel of the Madonna della Stella and the mother church of the Immaculate Conception, which keeps the relics of Saint Victorian, celebrated in July. In November the whole town fills up for the Feast of Saint Tryphon, with processions, fireworks contests and hot-air balloons.