Maglie (source: Visual Puglia )
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.
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Sun, sea, wind. Nature strikes in the first place, when one gets to this land stretch in balance between two seas. Salento has its core in the province of Lecce, - a Baroque Florence in Southern Italy – and reaches the provinces of Brindisi over the Adriatic Sea, and Taranto on the Ionian Sea side. The cities and inland towns expressions of the unique Lecce Baroque with Messapi and Salento Grecìa can still be seen. Its language, songs and feasts still show the culture of Graecia Magna. Surf, kite-surf and windsurf lovers never miss the beaches facing the Alimini lakes, while scuba diving fans just have to choose among the several equipped centers and charming sea beds of the Ionian coast as well as of the area between Otranto and Santa Maria di Leuca.
Church and hermitage of Santa Maria of the Angels - Scorrano
Lighthouse and aqueduct - Santa Maria di Leuca
Salento coast is characterized by a high variety in landscapes: the clear, fine sand beaches of Santa Cesarea seafront; famous caves such as Castro cave with its Grotta Romanelli, one of the most important Italian prehistoric settlements, and Grotta Zinzulusa, 'the pearl of caves', owing its name to the dialect word 'zinzuli', ('rags'), used by fishermen to indicate its beautiful stalactites and stalagmites
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Baroque style affirmed in Apulia during Counter-Reformation upon the will of Roman Church. A way of exalting Catholic symbols, Lecce and Nardò Baroque has its own characteristics that make it different from the same artistic style in other regions. Its peculiarities derive from the use of amber-colored Lecce stone as well as decorations used to mask the structures on which they are mounted
In Southern Apulia, at the heart of Salento, nine municipalities united to save what is still left of the ancient Grika culture. In this area of Salento there can still be found traces of Graecia Magna Grika language spoken in the Basilian convents dismantled after the council of Trent
Project created in collaboration with InnovaPuglia.
Regione Puglia
Regione Puglia