Wandering in Salento

Wandering in Salento - South Italy (The Ancient Otranto's Land).

We decided to cross Salento Peninsula (South Italy, Puglia) going from Lecce to Otranto : our first choice was to avoid both the coastal road and the motorway, taking instead secondary roads that run across the country and pass by small historic centers, as Martano, Melpignano, Giurdignano, Casamassella, ecc.

It's an extraordinary country, made of a fertile red earth, populated with splendid olive groves with writhed secular trees of wild beauty. "Dry stone" little walls parting fields of different owners or animals enclosures, design the country in a variated texture, punctuated by small country ancient houses, and also by "dry stone" buildings, the "pagghiare" or "caseddhe".

Here and there, beside country architectures, spring off remains of civilizations of neolithic age, dolmen and menhir and the "specchie", very ancient stone "tumulus" structures. About these last ones many hypothesis have ben formulated, but their age and their function is not yet clear: they could have been sighting towers as well as sepulchral monuments.

A very strong landscape, pregnant with signs and meaning.

We cross the "Grecìa" Salentina, finding Martano e Melpignano, villages where the Greek-Byzanthine ethnia is still alive and where still "grico" is spoken, which is an archaic form of Greek.

We chose this itinerary just because Otranto was the capital city of the ancient Byzanthine land, that remained a province of East Empire till to the arrival of Normans.

These small historic centers are very beautiful and rich in important monuments; Melpignano, for instance, has an ancient loggia market and an Augustinian Monastry which is one of the most important examples of Lecce's Baroque.

We turn up in Giurdignano in a market day, and we discover the grass market, where peasants come with products of their kitchen gardens, which are true Mediterranean gardens.

Here vegetables and fruits smell and taste more intensely, grown as they are in that rich red earth that I saw along the road. So we wander about looking, smelling and, sometimes, savouring.

We discover fruits and vegetable sun dried in summer to be eaten in winter, and all the preserves, salty and sweet: fruit jams and oil canned vegetables, in glass pots, home made with traditional proceedings, and, of course, strongly smelling capers.

These capers whose beautiful silver green hairs are profused over Baroque monuments, over dry stone little walls and over rocks, a leit motiv accompanying us everywhere.
We are tempted to take in big supplies.

And on we go in this landscape where villages, with their Baroque places, alternate with country, with Grecity, prehistory and country architecture of the big fortified farms.

We visit the beautiful farm di Torcito, owned by the county, which is being accurately restored.

Along the road we find several agritourisms, some of which offer country traditional cooking, or country dishes as well, but of eastern origin, as "noodles with honey" or the "massa", a very ancient dish with home made pasta and vegetables.

Wandering about across the small historic centers we dicover everywere shops and workshops offering products of a traditional craft, which still appears to be in common everyday use: nice rush baskets variously shaped, earthenware, wrought iron and papier mach&eacute.

Just before Otranto we stop for dinner in Uggiano La Chiesa, in a restaurant which is an ancient country farm, were food is sensational and where we find a cave well stocked with all the wines of Salento.

When we finally get to Otranto it's night, the moon over the sea gives an exagerate performance.

We employed a whole day for a journey that would have taken us three quarters of an hour by the coastal way or the motorway. But we still feel to travel again all over this "Salento out of track" taking still more time and possibly staying there for a holiday.
And we also feel to thank the authors of a very nice and original guide-book: "Da Otranto a Porto Badisco - passeggiate dalla natura alla memoria", which suggested us this itinerary. A book that is precious as an art book, can be used like a guide and read as a novel. A nice itinerary in reading for "vagabonds".

'); document.write('Fiamma' + '.'); // -->