Gallipoli · Sannicola · Tuglie · Galatone · LE
Four municipalities in the province of Lecce, held together by a town on an island and by what lay around it. The theme of the sea and the historic centre holds in full only in Gallipoli, and this must be said: Sannicola was a frazione of Gallipoli until 1908, but when it had a territory of its own the coast was left out of it. The real thread is another, and it lies in the sources: the same wars of the late fifteenth century, the Venetians of 1484, the Galateo, born in Galatone, who saw the sackings, a Castriota who, according to one scholar, is said to have defended Gallipoli and Galatone from the French. It is a journey for those who love reading walls, archives and minor churches, and accept that in Tuglie and Galatone the official sources could not be reached.
At a glance
Duration. 4 days.
The route
Day 1 — Gallipoli, the castle and the walls on the sea
The day begins, in our proposal, at the castle. According to the Comune's texts, the island was joined to the mainland by an isthmus, which the bridge replaced between 1601 and 1607; Porta Terra was the only access to the island. The castle bears centuries of sieges: the nine-sided keep may date back to the end of the 9th century, the Normans clad it, Charles I of Anjou in 1269 took it and destroyed it almost entirely after thirty-four rebel barons had held out there for seven months. In 1484 the Venetians arrived, held the town for four months and cut the rock that joined the town to the castle. The reason for the walls that today line the Riviera lies in the massacre of Otranto: according to the Comune, the bastioned circuit was built between 1483 and 1528, about two kilometres with twelve strongpoints among towers and bastions. The names are a register of trades and fears: the Torre del Fosso, whose ditch served as a lazaretto, the Torre delle Saponere, so called after the nearby soap factories, the Baluardo di San Domenico used as a powder magazine. In 1809 English and Bourbon ships bombarded these walls; between 1879 and 1887 their upper part was demolished down to street level. In front of the castle's side facing the town, the neoclassical covered market of 1881 is listed as under restoration. Inside the walls, the next day, one looks for the town that these stones protected.
Day 2 — Gallipoli, churches, archives and the fountain
The Cattedrale di Sant'Agata, according to the municipal page, was built between 1629 and 1696: the façade is in carparo, the lower order is by Scipione Lachibari and Francesco Bischetimi, the upper one shows, the page says, the spread of the “zimbalesco” idiom. Inside, three naves, the Martyrdom of Sant'Agata by Giovanni Andrea Coppola and the wooden choir by Giorgio Aver. On the Riviera, Santa Maria della Purità speaks of the port: it was built in 1664 as the oratory of the dockworkers' guild, and on the altar it has a canvas by Luca Giordano. The municipal Library was born in 1823 from the roughly three thousand volumes donated by Canon Carmine Fontò, in the former Oratorio dell'Immacolata dei Nobili; it holds the Libro Rosso of privileges and a manuscript entitled “La voce degli olii”, while the Historical Archive keeps papers on the port, the railway, the municipal Tonnara and the fish market. The Teatro Garibaldi was built in 1825 by the nobleman Bonaventura Balsamo as the “Teatro del Giglio”, in homage to the Bourbons, and took the name of Garibaldi in 1879, after passing to the Comune. The Museo Civico “Emanuele Barba” is closed on Mondays according to the municipal page. The so-called Greek Fountain closes the day with an enigma that the Comune does not hide: the left-hand relief bears an epigram on Dirce, but depicts Pasiphae and the Minotaur; on the right Byblis pursues her brother Caunus and turns into a spring. Its dating is debated, and here we do not choose one. The following day we leave the town towards the serre.
Day 3 — The Sant'Andrea park, Sannicola and Tuglie
The morning, in our proposal, belongs to the Parco naturale regionale Isola di Sant'Andrea e litorale di Punta Pizzo, established by regional law of 10 July 2006. The Comune describes the island as a flat limestone surface, on average about two metres high, with brackish steppes of glasswort, the endemic plant Statice japigica and a nesting colony of Audouin's gull; at Punta Pizzo maquis, pseudo-steppe and wetlands. From here, in our proposal, one goes to Sannicola, which its Comune places astride the Salento serre. It is a young town on an ancient land: until the eighteenth century the area was called Rodogallo, and abbeys of Basilian monks stood there. Of that of San Mauro the first mention is in a Greek parchment of May 1149; of the nine known parchments, the municipal page says they were found and then lost, and in 1567 the bishop found ruins there, a couple of rooms and a cave with two altars. San Salvatore, the only remaining part of a monastery, appears in 1310, when its abbot took part in the council of Otranto. The settlement was born, according to the historian Francesco D'Elia cited by the Comune, in 1715, when the owner granted rocky land to six peasants; the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, of 1640, incorporates the apse of the Byzantine church of San Nicola. The decree of 1908 that granted autonomy wrote the name “Sannicola” by mistake, and that of 1911 drew the boundaries leaving out the coast. Tuglie, which in our proposal takes up the afternoon, has little in the sources consulted. Wikipedia dates the works on the Chiesa Madre dell'Annunziata from 1721 to 1734, with the nave designed by Ferdinando Sanfelice, and places the Museo della Civiltà Contadina in the Palazzo ducale; an essay by the Fondazione Terra d'Otranto places the origin of the historic centre in the Santa Lucia quarter. The Museo della Radio, in via Vittorio Veneto, points out on its own website an underground olive press and a Stanza dei Bachi.
Day 4 — Galatone
The last day begins in front of Porta San Sebastiano. According to the private portal puglia.com, the earthquake of 1743 caused the walls to partly collapse, and the gate was rebuilt in carparo in 1748: it would be the last survivor of the Aragonese circuit. The coats of arms of the feudal lords, according to Wikipedia, are on the gate and on the Palazzo Marchesale. Galatone knew the same wars as Gallipoli: the Sapere.it entry says it was sacked by the Turks in 1480 and by the Venetians in 1484. Here, according to Wikipedia, was born Antonio De Ferrariis (Wikipedia's spelling; the Comune of Sannicola writes “De Ferraris”), the Galateo, whom the historian Vittorio Zacchino calls “the humanist” and whom the Comune of Sannicola cites as a witness to the devastation in the territory of Gallipoli. His friend was Giovanni Castriota, who according to the same Zacchino is said to have defended Taranto, Gallipoli and Galatone from the French between 1500 and 1502; it is told, the scholar writes, that he died in a duel at Mesagne in 1516; on the portal of the church of Santi Sebastiano e Rocco the same scholar read a scroll with the words “CASTRIOTA DOMUS”. The Santuario del Crocifisso della Pietà has, according to puglia.com, a three-order façade and, according to Wikipedia, an octagonal dome frescoed with Sant'Elena and a fourteenth-century icon on the high altar. The sanctuary of the Madonna della Grazia, according to the Friars Minor who look after it, was designed by Gian Maria Tarantino of Nardò and consecrated in 1711. Wikipedia mentions the Castello di Fulcignano, a quadrangular tufa enclosure about eight metres high, abandoned in the fifteenth century. The journey, in our proposal, ends here.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 15 defects corrected · not approved