centro storico, di crinale, collinare, murato, Felitto, Philecto (denominazione storica), Fleoti (denominazione storica), Filettum (denominazione storica), Filetto (denominazione storica)

The old gateway stands where Felitto’s medieval walls once met the road. In the Norman centuries, this hilltop village was a closed circuit of stone: narrow, twisting lanes rising toward a castle keep, the whole place locked behind four gates. Only the western one remains upright today. The towers that flanked these entrances, raised in the eleventh century, survive only as rubble.

The name Felitto appears first in a papal bull of 1191, as “Felix”, a place that changed hands through feudal grants and dynasties. By the eighteenth century, the walls still held, braced by merlon-topped towers, and three gates gave access. Two of those lasted until the century’s end.

Now the circuit is broken, the defences partly demolished. What stays is this single stone arch, a remnant of a system that once made every approach a decision, every visitor a supplicant at the threshold.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.