Carpino ( Pugliese: ) is a coastal town and ''

comune The (; plural: ) is a local administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions ('' regioni'') and provinces (''province''). The can also ...

'' of the

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

region of

Apulia it, Pugliese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographic ...

, lying on the

Gargano Gargano (, Gargano Apulian Italo-Romance arˈgæːnə is a historical and geographical sub-region in the province of Foggia, Apulia, southeast Italy, consisting of a wide isolated mountain massif made of highland and several peaks and forming ...

peninsula. The town's name has been linked to the rebirth of the traditional

folk song Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be c ...

s of Gargano, which have artistic value and deserve to be preserved and studied. The group " Cantori di Carpino" (Carpino Singers), by reinterpreting ancient

tarantella () is a group of various southern Italian folk dances originating in the regions of Calabria, Campania and Puglia. It is characterized by a fast upbeat tempo, usually in time (sometimes or ), accompanied by tambourines. It is among the mo ...

s, has enabled the development of a broadly articulated project regarding the traditional popular music of southern Italy. The town's main square, now called the "Piazza del Popolo", or People's Square, is the historic home of the folk music festival and its influences. The Carpino Folk Festival is an event that includes several cultural elements, brought together under a single symbol, with the performing arts, and especially music, dance, and theater with popular roots, but also workshops, conferences, roundtables, workshops, presentations of literature and cinema, with a full program of live performances, original and energetic, showing the richness and musical diversity of an area that has many natural resources, as well as landscape and historical importance. The festival has high artistic achievements and standards, although it has not yet fully exploited its material in a structured, integrated and accessible way, to represent real strategic factors in economic and social development. Standing on a hill which has many well tended olive trees, Carpino has been dubbed "Città dell’olio" (Oil Town) because of its business of producing olive oil. Noteworthy are the archaeological site of the "

grotte di Minutille Grotte may refer to: *Grotte, Sicily, a comune in the province of Agrigento, Italy *Grotte di Castro, a comune in the Province of Viterbo in the Italian region Latium *Robert Grotte, a New Zealand professional rugby league footballer * Nicolas d ...

" (the Minutille caves), the Church of the Holy Cross, the Church of Saint George, and the Church of Saint Cyril.

History

The town is first mentioned in historical records in 1158, in a bull of pope

Adrian IV Pope Adrian IV ( la, Adrianus IV; born Nicholas Breakspear (or Brekespear); 1 September 1159, also Hadrian IV), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 4 December 1154 to his death in 1159. He is the only Englishman t ...

, with which the abbey of Monte Sacro obtained privileges on the church of St. Peter e St. Mary near the "''castellum capralis''", a location identifiable as the municipality, as subsequently confirmed from historical documents.

Notes and references

Cities and towns in Apulia {{Apulia-geo-stub