Otranto (source: Visual Puglia )
Otranto appears enclosed within a labyrinth and powerful city-fortress perched on the crystal clear sea in the most eastern area of Italy. The beaches around Otranto can be quickly and easily reached by car or, even better, by boat. A few kilometres north of the city you arrive to Alimini Lakes, a freshwater lagoon connected to the sea and in front of which the beaches of the same name extend. These beaches are among the most beautiful of all in Puglia. Mulino ad Acqua Bay is located between the Alimini Lakes and Otranto. This bay offers a truly spectacular game of lights caused by a collapsed cave. Turchi Bay offers small, sandy bay areas which were used in ancient times as docking platforms. The coast south of Otranto is rocky and rugged, however the roughness of the rocks is balanced by its clear water. Other famous locations included Badisco Port and Orte Bay. From here you can walk to Cape Palàscia and Sant’Emiliano, little inlets among the clearest water. We would like to highlight numerous scuba-dives in participation with the Diving Centres in Otranto that offer you the chance to explore the seabed, walls and caves among the most beautiful around Cape Otranto, such as Grotta Palombara where you can admire bream, lobster, moral eels and grouper fish, and Grotta Taglio dell’Orte located between Cape Otranto and Falci Point.
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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