Puglia is one of the most beautiful regions in Italy. Salento is the southern part of Puglia.
There are really many places that you should visit if you are in Salento. We highlight just a few of them here. An online search will certainly help you find many more.
Santa Maria di Leuca, often spelled simply Leuca (Greek: Λευκά, from Leukos, “white”), is in the Salento peninsula. Santa Maria di Leuca is famous for its iconic lighthouse. It is the second most important lighthouse in Italy, after Genova. Next to the lighthouse is the large Sanctuary, or Basilica, De Finibus Terrae (“End of the Land,” 1720-1755), built to commemorate the passage of St. Peter here during his travel to Italy. It is devoted to Saint Mary (from whom the town gets the name Santa Maria di Leuca). It lies on the former site of a Greek temple dedicated to Athena.
Punta Meliso promontory (the ancient Promontorium lapygium or Sallentinum) is the southeastern extremity of Italy — traditionally considered the lowest point of the geographical “heel” of Italian peninsula, as well as the meeting point of the waters from the Adriatic Sea and the Ionian Sea. But Leuca is a bay so there’s another promontory called Punta Ristola challenging this geographical particularity.
Santa Maria di Leuca’s littoral is marked by numerous grottoes with Latin and Greek inscriptions. Also famous are the 19th century patrician villas. Not far off Punta Ristola, at ca. 85 m of depth, lies the shipwreck of the Italian submarine Pietro Micca, sunk during World War II.
Prehistoric remains have been found in some the about 66 caves of the coast of Leuca, like Grotta Porcinara and Grotta del Diavolo. According to historians, the town takes its name from “Leucasia,” a white beautiful mermaid (from ancient Greek λευκός = white, bright) who conquered sailors and farmers by her charming voice. In 1992, the Salento writer and poet Carlo Stasi created a story (mistakenly believed a legend) on the mermaid Leucasia imagining that he had fallen in love with a handsome messapian, the shepherd Melìsso, who rejected her because he was in love with the beautiful Arìstula. The mermaid took revenge by overwhelming the two lovers with the waves unleashed by her two tails and their bodies were petrified by the goddess Minerva in the two points that today are called Punta Rìstola, from the name of Aristula, and Punta Mèliso, from Melisso. Lost her voice, Leucasia committed suicide and her petrified bones would be the white cliffs of Leuca.
Ciolo is a narrow coastal inlet and a site of historical and environmental interest. The location is also known as a geological site and for the presence of numerous sea caves, the largest one being the Grotta del Ciolo. The name Ciolo comes from the noun in Salentino dialect “ciole”, which refers to crows or magpies, which are widespread in this region. Ciolo is dominated by Ponte Ciolo (Ciolo’s Bridge), a road bridge built in the 1960s. In Ciolo canyon there are several sea caves formed during the Neolithic and Paleolithic age. In total this area includes three different major caves: the Grotta Grande del Ciolo (Ciolo’s Huge Cave), the Grotta Piccola Del Ciolo (Ciolo’s Small Cave) and the Grotta Delle Prazziche (Cave of the Prazziche).
The Grotta Piccola Del Ciolo, also called the “Grotta della foca monaca” (Cave of the monk seal), is a semi-submerged cave located in the homonymous cove. Its entrance is located on the west side of the canyon (facing the sea) and it is set on a fracture slightly enlarged by water. The Grotta Grande Del Ciolo is also known by different names, such as Grotta degli Spiriti (Ghosts’ Cave), Grotta dei Passeri (Sparrows’ Cave) and Bocca del Pozzo (Well’s Mouth). The cave is semi-submerged and is characterized by a wide entrance, the result of an ancient phenomenon of collapse that partially occluded a portion of the archeological substrate of the cave, about 20 meters above the sea level, leaving the remaining portion exposed to sea erosion provoked by the constant inflow and then outflow of water and waves. Grotta Delle Prazziche is one of the main caves near Ciolo, and is accessible by boat. The structure of the cave is circular, and at the top there is a vertical syphon to the open air. Many studies have been carried out inside and some prehistoric remains have been found, including handcrafts belonging to the Neolithic, ceramics and remains of rhinos.
Otranto is a coastal town, in the province of Lecce (Apulia, Italy) on the east coast of the Salento peninsula and it is a member of the”I Borghi più belli d’Italia” (“The most beautiful villages of Italy”). The Strait of Otranto, to which the city gives its name, connects the Adriatic Sea with the Ionian Sea and separates Italy from Albania. The lighthouse Faro della Palascìa, at approximately 5 kilometres (3 miles) southeast of Otranto, marks the most easterly point of the Italian mainland. Otranto occupies the site of the ancient Greek city of Magna Graecia Hydrus (in Greek: Ὑδροῦς) or Hydruntum (in Latin). Otranto was a town of Messapian (Illyrian) origin, which, in the wars of Pyrrhus and of Hannibal sided against Rome. It was subject to the Byzantine dominion and was later captured by the Ottomans and, in the modern era, was the site of a few battles during the two World Wars. Otranto main sights include, among others, the Castello Aragonese (Castle), the Cathedral (where bones and relics of the Martyrs of Otranto, who perished in the 15th-century siege, are kept), the church of San Pietro, with Byzantine frescoes, the catacombs of Torre Pinta.
Grotta della Poesia (Poetry Cave) is located in the Roca Vecchia village on the Adriatic coastline between the cities of Lecce and Otranto. It is one of the most well-known natural rock formations inside the archaeological site and it is a natural pool that is recognized as one of the most beautiful natural pools in the world. Next to it, there are the ruins of the Castle walls, the sighting tower built during the sixteenth century, and the Sacred Place dedicated to the Madonna of Roca. The cave has an elliptic shape and, compared to the smaller cave that is a few km away from the bigger one, gives you all the chance to have a great bath after taking a huge dive of 5 meters.
The name originates from a legend that tells the story of a Princess who liked to bathe in the waters of Grotta della Poesia. In turn, the beautiful princess has become the muse for countless poets in the Salento peninsula. More realistically, the cave’s name originates from the fact that in Greek “Posia” is a water source which probably gave the name to this site. The caves were most likely used for religious purposes. There are Messapian inscriptions on the wall that helped to decrypt the original purpose of the caves. From these inscriptions it becomes very clear that they are was dedicated to the worship of god Taotor, a Messapian deity.
I Faraglioni di Sant’Andrea (the Sea Stacks of Sant’Andrea) are located a bit further down the Spiaggia delle Due Sorelle (Two Sisters Beach) of Torre dell’Orso and the Poetry Cave, more precisely in a hamlet of the municipality of Melendugno: 14 kilometers from Otranto on the coastal road. This wonder, in Apulia, can only be seen on the eastern coast, because the western coast, washed by the Ionian Sea, is much less rugged and rocky.
Other recommended places to visit on the are La Baia dei Turchi, Castro, and Santa Cesarea Terme.
La Cala dell’Acquaviva (Acquaviva Cove) is a spectacular cove located in Salento and characterized by fresh water and wild nature. A magical place that, despite its exquisitely wild charm, also provides the traveler with some amenities, including a small parking lot and a bar with a terrace overlooking the cove (https://www.anamterrace.com/ ). The cove is extraordinary, cozy, and characterized by some stretches with very cold waters, making it ideal for escaping the summer heat. The reason the water temperatures are so cool lies in the fact that Acquaviva Cove is fed by the springs from which it takes its name. Transparency, thermal condition and, rocky bottom depend on the continuous inflow of the icy water that pours into the sea here. A real fjord in Salento just over ten meters long and within which local vegetation and even steep rocks find space. Everything is as wild as it is intimate. Cala dell’Acquaviva is easy to reach as it lies between Castro and Marina di Marittima, on the eastern Salento coastline.
Punta Prosciutto is a seaside resort that is part of the municipality of Porto Cesareo and extreme northwestern part of the province of Lecce, in Salento. Punta Prosciutto beach lies in the town of the same name, not far from San Pietro in Bevagna and Porto Cesareo, boasting Caribbean colors and lush, wild nature. The peculiarity of the sea lies in the fact that the shallow seabed is recovered after a few meters. The white sandy beaches stretch for several kilometers, and behind them stretch centuries-old dunes covered with typical Salento Mediterranean vegetation. The Punta Prosciutto stretch is bordered to the north by Torre Colimena and to the south by Riva degli Angeli, circumscribed by a thick line of centuries-old Mediterranean scrub. The uplift of the seabed has generated a wetland area that has produced a special habitat for the establishment of a particular flora and fauna.
Romanelli Cave is one of the natural coastal caves of Salento, near Castro. Grotta Romanelli, accessible from the sea (entry to which is, however, forbidden) is very important in the history of prehistoric studies because with its discovery the presence of the Upper Paleolithic in Italy long denied by scholars was definitively established. Further studies found that the site was frequented from 350 000 to a period before the appearance of the Neanderthals. The first explorations date back to 1900 by Paolo Emilio Stasi (Teresa’s great-great-grandfather!), assisted by other local scholars and naturalists. The cave had two periods of frequentation: one in the Middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) and the other in the Upper Paleolithic (Romanellian). Stone tools (scrapers) attributable to the Mousterian were found in the “red earths” of Romanelli Cave. The term “Mousterian” refers to the culture that spread throughout Europe in the Middle Paleolithic (120,000-40,000 years ago). Its author was Neanderthal man, who died out at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, giving rise to anatomically modern man. Lithic tools, bone and engraved stones attributable to the Romanellian, which is an aspect of the Italian Final Upper Paleolithic (about 10,000 years ago), were found in the “brown earths.” With the Upper Paleolithic (40/35,000-10,000 years ago) the first artistic manifestations performed by modern man on objects or cave walls emerged. Grotta Romanelli has returned stones engraved with a wide variety of motifs, chronologically parallel to the Romanellian industry.
CASTELLO MONACI
8 giugno 2024
Made with Love for Love by
Duanne Marques Bruno and Alessandro Stella