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Maglie, a town 81 a.s.l. in the very heart of the Leccese Salento, enjoys a strategic geographical position as a communication hub between the Adriatic and Ionian seas. For this reason, it is considered as the virtual chief town of lower Salento. The settlement was first inhabited during Byzantium’s rule, around the IX century, after the unification of three adjacent hamlets: San Basilio, Sant’Eligio and San Vito. The Greeks possessed it and built three towers to defend its inhabitants and provide the safety they needed for further populating and spreading the settlement. The Normans included it in the County of Lecce and, in 1190, Tancredi of Altavilla gave it as a feud to Evangelista Lubello. Subsequently, it passed to the families Maresgallo, Carrera, Prati di Arnesano, Filomarini, and eventually Capece. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Ferdinand II of Bourbon decided that the road connecting Otranto to Gallipoli had to pass through Maglie, thus confirming its significant topographic position and contributing to its economic and cultural fortune. In fact, the most important monuments in town, the same town’s urban layout characterised by Murat-style stone buildings, all date back to that period. The industriousness of craftsmen and professionals has already contributed to give Maglie its role of economic capital of lower Salento since the XVIII century with the development of all the potential of its traditional activities, the arts of lacework and wrought iron, which were improved and developed at to industrial level.