Cursi · Bagnolo del Salento · Scorrano · Maglie · Muro Leccese · LE
It is a journey through inland Salento, five villages in the province of Lecce. The thread that the sources read allow us to follow is that of stones set upright: the menhirs along the road between Cursi and Bagnolo, and then the columns raised in the villages, at Bagnolo, at Maglie and at Muro Leccese, where there is the column of the Four Evangelists. Alongside is the pietra leccese, which at Cursi has an ecomuseum. It must be said honestly that the theme hypothesised at the start, “stone and masserie”, holds only halfway: the sources read say nothing about masserie, and for Maglie and Muro Leccese the Municipalities' pages could not be opened, so there the account becomes brief. It is an itinerary for those who read villages starting from their minor monuments.
At a glance
Duration. 3 days.
The route
Day 1 — Cursi, the stone and the fief
You begin underground, in the hypogeal oil mill of Palazzo De Donno, in piazza Papa Pio XII, where the Municipality places the Ecomuseo della Pietra Leccese e delle Cave, a project launched in the 1990s. Since October 2015 it has hosted the permanent exhibition “Stone Stories”, devoted to the stones of Puglia in architecture, design and landscape, and the collection “Oggetti della Memoria” curated by Ugo La Pietra; ISPRA classifies it as an in situ museum, with themes of quarrying, science and technology. On the village square stands the Palazzo Feudale: according to the municipal record it was probably built in the second half of the 15th century for Baron Filippo Antonio Maramonte, before the confirmation by Ferrante of Aragon of 20 May 1476; in 1818 it passed to the De Donno, was a tobacco factory until the early 1950s and since 15 January 1959 has belonged to the Municipality, which has its seat there. The fief perhaps also moved the parish. In via Trioti, in the old core, the rock church of San Giorgio or Santo Stefano has only two pillars and frescoes in Italo-Greek style with inscriptions in Greek, the warrior saints Giorgio and Teodoro, San Pietro on the first pillar: some scholars believe it was originally dedicated to San Pietro, on the basis of a diploma of Frederick II of 9 June 1219 that names an “ecclesia Sancti Petri de Curse”, and the municipal record hypothesises that it was the first parish church, transferred when the feudal residence arose. Another municipal record, “Cripta di Santo Stefano”, perhaps referring to the same place (not verified), recalls that the Greek rite officially ceased in 1614. A little further on, Santa Lucia has a vault “alla leccese a spigolo” and two statues of unknown provenance on the buttresses. Outside the village, about one kilometre to the west, the Croce delle Tagliate, a menhir of 3.30 metres, leans towards Cursi: of the four that the Municipality recalls, two remain, and on their purpose, the record writes, scholars do not agree. The second, for the Municipality of Cursi, stands on the road to Bagnolo, where the following day begins.
Day 2 — Bagnolo del Salento and Scorrano
Along the provincial road between Cursi and Bagnolo, about half a kilometre from the village and near the cemetery, the Municipality of Bagnolo describes a menhir, without it being verified that it is the same one indicated by Cursi: it is a pillar of calcarenite cut in local quarries, with narrow faces of 30 centimetres and wide ones of 44, on a pavement of basoli from Soleto. On its lower parts, for the Municipality, it has cruciform marks that could indicate a Christianisation: the same standing stone, in our reading, that the columns of the saints will take up again in the village. In piazza San Giorgio the column of the patron saint is born of a lightning bolt. On 30 August 1838 a storm struck the Chiesa Matrice during the services; the tradition collected by the Municipality has it that the discharge, without victims, broke an arm of the saint's statue, and that this was read as a warning because that year the civic festivities had not been held. Work on the column began the same year. It is in pietra leccese; the small columns around it in Soleto flint, the chain, which comes from a ship decommissioned in the port of Taranto, and the street lamps, with their shafts from a foundry in Molfetta, are arrangements from the 1930s. The Matrice of San Giorgio was consecrated on 4 September 1851, after the demolition of the previous church in 1848.
Scorrano appears for the first time in 1190, among the hamlets of the County of Lecce, according to the Ministry of Culture's record: an elliptical settlement, enclosed by walls demolished between the late 19th and early 20th century. Porta Terra, of the 15th century, is today, for the Municipality, the only testimony of the medieval circuit. The detail is on the inner wall, on the left: in 1743 the citizens had Santa Domenica painted there to thank her for protection from the earthquake that, the Municipality writes, claimed hundreds of victims in Terra d'Otranto. In the central niche is another fresco, of which two angels holding a crown remain visible, while the figure receiving it can no longer be seen; the civic coat of arms was added in 1838. To the same saint is linked the July festival, from which the luminarie were born, recounted in the Museo delle Luminarie di Puglia with sketches and testimonies of the master paratori. In piazzetta Municipio the Torre dell'Orologio dates from 1819 and Palazzo Veris, of the 17th century, has a façade in local stone. The next day you go to Maglie, where a column returns.
Day 3 — Maglie and Muro Leccese
At Maglie the Municipality lists the places without it having been possible to read the detailed records, and the account stays spare. The Palazzo Baronale Capece is a castle of the Angevin age reworked in the second half of the 15th century by the Lubello, under Alfonso I of Aragon; Santa Maria della Scala arose in place of a small church of the Greek rite and preserves a medieval rose window, window and door from it; the Duomo is the former collegiate church. In via Roma the votive column returns, that of the Madonna delle Grazie: according to FAI it was erected after 1684 for a confraternity, is 15 metres high, and on 15 October 1900 a lightning bolt brought down its statue; the present one in pietra leccese, by the Maglie sculptor Luigi De Pascalis, was put in place in 1927, with the four patron saints at its sides. The Municipality also points out the Museo Archeoindustriale di Terra d'Otranto, in the former factory of the Fratelli Piccinno.
Muro Leccese receives a few lines, from the Region's records. The village is of Messapian origin and preserves traces of its circuit walls at the edges of the settlement; the church of Santa Marina, of the Byzantine period, was built with slabs from those walls and holds a cycle of frescoes devoted to San Nicola. In the Palazzo del Principe, in piazza del Popolo, the Museo Diffuso Borgo Terra displays finds from the research of the Università del Salento and of the Soprintendenza; on the same square the Chiesa Madre dell'Annunziata dates from the late 17th century, and there is a last column, of the Four Evangelists. In the countryside the record counts five menhirs: the journey, in our proposal, ends among the same standing stones from which it set out.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 11 defects corrected · not approved