Mesagne · San Pancrazio Salentino · San Donaci · Cellino San Marco · BR
Four municipalities in the province of Brindisi. The 2015 map-guide “Discovering Puglia” joined Mesagne and San Donaci in route no.43, “Via dell'olio (I)”. On olive oil the documents read do not hold up: the membership of these municipalities in the Terra d'Otranto PDO remains contradicted. Two threads, however, do hold. The first is wine: according to the text of the production rules of the Salice Salentino DOC, read in a private copy, San Pancrazio and San Donaci lie entirely within the production area and Cellino in part; Mesagne, according to a technical report that is not the production rules, belongs to the Brindisi DOC. The second thread is older: from 1100 the tithes of Mesagne went to the church of Brindisi, and San Donaci and San Pancrazio were villages of its archbishops until the abolition of feudalism. Cellino instead had feudal families.
At a glance
Duration. 3 days.
The route
Day 1 — Mesagne and the Malvindi road
The old centre of Mesagne, according to the GAL Terra dei Messapi, has the shape of a heart; the Porta Grande is from the 16th century. The reason for this journey, though, lies in a document: in 1100 Goffredo di Conversano granted the church of Brindisi the tithes on Mesagne, and an inquiry of 1245 confirmed them, according to G. Carito's study on the 12th-century archbishops of Brindisi. The same study recalls that Roger II assigned eighty villeins at “Misanio” to the Benedictine nuns of Brindisi. Of the town the GAL describes above all the squares: piazza Orsini del Balzo, from the 16th century, with Palazzo Cavaliere, indicated as the Museum of Sacred Art, and the church of Sant'Anna; piazza IV Novembre, which was piazza Sedile or dei Nobili; the Palazzo dell'Orologio of 1867 today houses the municipal library. In the centre the GAL also points out the Messapian site of Vico Quercia, the small Byzantine temple of San Lorenzo, and a semi-underground olive mill turned into an information point. A private website places the archaeological museum “Ugo Granafei” in the castle (the GAL confirms it) and gives the Messapian park of Muro Tenente at about 6 km; the GAL places it between Mesagne and Latiano. On feudal lords, mother church and convents the sources read are silent, and the story stops here. Leaving on the road to San Pancrazio, near the junction with the Oria-Cellino provincial road, the GAL points out in contrada Malvindi Roman baths with two phases, the beginning of the 1st century AD and the 3rd-4th century: the last stop before the Tavoliere di Lecce, as the sheet calls the area of San Pancrazio.
Day 2 — San Pancrazio Salentino
We begin from a church in via Castello, Sant'Antonio da Padova. According to the Ministry of Culture sheet the town was born between the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th century around a chapel of San Pancrazio Martire, the one that today is Sant'Antonio, and in 2004, during a restoration of the church, structures of a crypt and burials probably belonging to the original chapel came to light. The reason for the place lies in its master. From 1171, writes Carito, the village was among the possessions of the church of Brindisi and remained under archiepiscopal jurisdiction until the French decade; in 1221, says the ministerial sheet, the Castello Arcivescovile was built beside the church as the residence of the archbishops, which a local text published on brindisiweb recalls as the prelates' summer retreat. The same text describes in Sant'Antonio frescoes that recall the attack of the Turks of 1 January 1547. The town lies at 62 metres in the Tavoliere di Lecce, 15 km from the Ionian coast, cut into two unequal parts by the Salentina state road; the name “Salentino” was added to it by a decree of 21 September 1862, to distinguish it from San Pancrazio Parmense. In the Chiesa Matrice, from 1869 according to the sheet, the archiepiscopal thread returns in an object. According to an article by G. Lacorte published on brindisiweb, the church is Neoclassical, and the high altar in inlaid marble by Aniello Gentile was commissioned in 1750 by Archbishop Antonino Sersale for the cathedral of Brindisi and bought for San Pancrazio in 1969. Outside the town time recedes: a little over a kilometre to the east, at the locality “Li Castieddhi”, the GAL indicates an Iron Age hut village, from the 8th century BC, and in the rock settlement of Caragnuli the Grotta dell'Angelo, a tomb that later became a frescoed medieval church. According to Stridi's text, the sanctuary of Sant'Antonio alla Macchia, a chapel of 1867, stands above a rock church used by monks of the Greek rite. The whole territory falls within the Salice Salentino zone, like that of the neighbouring town, San Donaci.
Day 3 — San Donaci and Cellino San Marco
In San Donaci the day opens at the cemetery, in the chapel of Santa Maria delle Grazie: a medieval church with a Virgin painted on the wall, which the Ministry sheet dates to the 15th century. Here too the archbishop of Brindisi ruled: from 1130 the village belonged to the archiepiscopal see, according to the sheet and according to Carito. In 1461 Ferdinand of Aragon assigned it to Giorgio Castriota Scanderbeg, for the help received against John II of Lorraine; but Scanderbeg and his Albanian colony left the fief to the archbishop, and the sheet calls that interruption “formal and not substantial”. In the second half of the 18th century the inhabitants rebelled against the bad management of the administrators; having regained the fief, Archbishop Annibale De Leo had the marshy land reclaimed. The layout of the town preserves its layers: a street grid of Roman pattern, around via Perrone and via Parini, a curvilinear medieval plan above it and a radial expansion; the Matrice dell'Assunta, late Neoclassical, is from 1899. The territory enters the Natura 2000 network with the Bosco Curtipetrizzi, which the ministerial sheet also mentions for Cellino.
Cellino San Marco tells of the other countryside, that of the lay feudal lords. According to the ministerial sheet, from 1304 to 1806 it was a fief of the De Fallosa, the De Noha, the Albrizzi, the Chyurlia and others; the Palazzo Baronale, known as the Castello degli Albrizzi, is from the 16th century, and the Chyurlia enlarged it, making it a residence, while the church of Santa Caterina d'Alessandria e San Marco Evangelista is from the 18th century. Of the medieval fabric, the sheet warns, no visible trace remains; until 1927 the municipality was in the province of Lecce. The Bosco Curtipetrizzi is protected by a decree of 1971. The GAL points out Roman finds in contrada Mea and older ones in contrada Li Veli, and the Villa Neviera of the De Viti de Marco, from 1888, used to store snow. Here wine has a calendar: the Sagra del Negroamaro at the end of August, the wine festival in November (dates indicated by the GAL page, undated and not verified for 2026). The journey, in our proposal, ends here.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 15 defects corrected · not approved