santuario, "pietà popolare", Santa Maria di Pozzo Faceto

A few kilometres from Fasano, in a landscape of olive groves and fortified farmhouses, the hamlet of Pozzo Faceto has grown up around its namesake sanctuary. The church’s object of veneration is an image of the Madonna and Child, long assumed to be a Byzantine icon but now recognised as a fragment of fresco from the later fourteenth century. The story of its discovery is wrapped in legend: the Virgin is said to have appeared to local peasants, directing them to dig a well, the ‘Puteo Faceto’ of the name, where the image was found. A more plausible account places the discovery during the well’s actual excavation. The site’s topography supports this: beneath the sanctuary run the course of a seasonal stream and a succession of natural cavities, perhaps remnants of the rupestrian settlement of ‘Puteo Faceto’. In September 2020, the church was formally declared a diocesan sanctuary for popular piety.

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