Salice Salentino (source: Visual Puglia )
Salice is located between the territories of Campi, Veglie, S. Pancrazio (BR) and Avetrana (TA), at the borderline between the provinces of Taranto and Brindisi. Located between the Principality of Taranto and the County of Lecce, Salice had a strategically important geographical position. It owes its name to the presence of an ancient forest that had a prevalence of salicaceous plants (willow trees, “salici” in Italian), as officially written for the first time in a Norman document of 1102. When its population and importance grew, Salice became a barony in 1294 and, among its first Barons, it had Pandolfo of the Aldemorisco family. In 1392, the feud was acquired by Raimondello Orsini Del Balzo, who built a massive castle here, later subdivided into several private properties. Since 1405 a sequence of feudatories controlled the settlement. After the Aragonese rule came the difficult Spanish viceroyalty period, during which plague and earthquakes terribly upset the population. In 1569, the feud was sold to Giovanni Antonio Albricci from Como, who transferred in Salice with his family in the "King’s Houses" and, in 1591, acquired the title of Marquis of Salice. After a series of Seignories, at the beginning of the seventeenth century the Spanish family Enriquez inherited the feud from the Bolano de Castilla. In 1749 the Filomarino-Enriquez family ruled Salice until 1845. During the unification of Italy, Arcangelo De Castris, town mayor since 1869, played a major role. Salice Salentino is also the brand name of a prestigious DOC (controlled denomination of origin) wine.
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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