Road station
Veretum
Serra di Vereto
Listen to the story
Veretum, near Patù close to the very tip of Italy's heel, was a Sallentine town that the Greek geographer Strabo says was once called Baris. It may be the Hyria where, according to the historian Herodotus, Cretans settled after a storm drove them ashore, and the Roman scholar Varro names Idomeneus of Crete as its founder. The church of the Madonna di Vereto marks its site. In the sea beside it, the map faintly writes the harbour of the Sallentini.