Alessano · Montesano Salentino · Miggiano · Presicce-Acquarica · LE
Four municipalities in the province of Lecce, in the Capo di Leuca. The hypothesised theme, “Salento Middle Ages”, comes from a route in the regional map-guide of 2015 and holds only in part: the GAL Capo di Leuca records date to the 12th century the first documents of Miggiano and the castle of Acquarica, to the 9th the crypt of Santa Marina, to the 13th century the chapel of Celsorizzo, but the main church of Alessano, the former cathedral, is a church decided upon in the 18th century. The thread that the sources support best is another one: a town that counted for more than it does today, Alessano, a suppressed episcopal see, fiefs passed from family to family, oil worked underground. Of Miggiano and Montesano the open sources say little, and there the story grows shorter. It is a journey for those who read the dates on the stones.
At a glance
Duration. 3 days.
The route
Day 1 — Alessano
We begin from the square that today bears the name of don Tonino Bello and that was formerly called Piazza Assunzione. On one side the Collegiata del Santissimo Salvatore; opposite, at number 41, according to the Diocese's Parco culturale ecclesiale, the house where the bishop was born. The church explains the town. The GAL Capo di Leuca recalls that the Normans gave Alessano a pre-eminent role, that its greatest splendour came in the 16th century under the Gonzaga and that in that century Cesare Raho called it “capital of the Leucadia”. There was a diocese here. According to the Diocese of Ugento, at the beginning of the 17th century the cathedral had a single nave with a wooden roof; in 1755 Bishop Dionigi Latomo Massa found it dilapidated and decided on a new one, designed by the Alessano-born architect Felice De Palma. On 27 June 1818 the diocese was suppressed and united with Ugento, and the cathedral became a collegiate church. Inside, the same source points to the wooden pulpit by Giuseppe De Cupertinis, nine side altars and, at the altar of San Raffaele, the canvas of Tobias and the Angel by Paolo Finoglio, where the bishop who wanted the church lies at rest; the GAL adds an 18th-century pipe organ. In this church, according to the Diocese, don Tonino Bello received the sacraments of Christian initiation and was ordained a priest; his tomb is in the town cemetery, and the decree declaring him venerable, announced on 25 November 2021, was promulgated by Pope Francis. The historic centre, according to the GAL, is made of courtyard houses with Renaissance façades, balustrades and carved cornices, and of a repertoire of signs: ouroboros, human protomes, Greek, Latin and calvary crosses. There is also the giudecca, the old Jewish quarter. In Via Alessio Comneno, Palazzo Legari, residence of the former dukes, has a lion carved on its portal; according to the same ecclesiastical source, the Capuchins have been present since 1628 with the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. Outside the town, on the hill of Montesardo, Messapian remains surface, and the countryside has dry-stone walls with geometric decorations. According to an industrial archaeology survey cited by the GAL, which does not name it, oil was the main production here for almost eight centuries. It is the thread that leads to the neighbouring towns.
Day 2 — Montesano Salentino and Miggiano
Montesano has a short history on paper. The GAL page says that the town probably dates back to the 14th century and that it passed to the D'Aragona and then to the Marulli, as a fief of the Marquisate of Specchia and Campomarino. Among the illustrious citizens of the 18th century the same page recalls the Bitonti brothers, physicians and surgeons, and Saverio Scolozzi, priest, jurist and surgeon, and among the places it lists a Palazzo Bitonti. According to the GAL the Chiesetta della Consolazione dates from 1821 and the Chiesa Matrice was built in 1822. All around, on a karst soil that was once Mediterranean scrub, centuries-old olive groves now grow. The patron saint is San Donato, invoked against epilepsy. The Municipality's website could not be read, and of Montesano nothing more can be said.
Miggiano, according to the same source, appears in documents in the 12th century. The GAL page links the birth of the present nucleus to 1156, when William the Bad destroyed Vaste and part of the inhabitants took refuge in the valley; the name passed from Mesiano and Misciano to “Miggiano dei Paduli” in the 17th century. The oldest place is the crypt of Santa Marina, which the GAL dates to the 9th century, with 15th-century frescoes and a Dormitio Virginis. In the Matrice of San Vincenzo Martire, with parts from the 16th, 19th and 20th centuries, there is a canvas of the saint from the early 17th century, probably by Donato Antonio D'Orlando of Nardò. In the area stand some menhirs, whose meaning remains a hypothesis. Here too the municipal website was closed. The third day, in our proposal, is for the two halves of a municipality born from a merger.
Day 3 — Presicce and Acquarica del Capo
Presicce-Acquarica was born from the merger of two villages. At Presicce one looks first beneath one's feet. The GAL describes underground oil mills carved into the limestone between the 17th and the 19th century, gathered around Piazza del Popolo, the Palazzo Ducale and the Mother Church, and closed at the end of the 19th century; the oil left from the port of Gallipoli. The town is called, according to the GAL, “Città degli Ipogei”. The town was already a casale in the Norman period and, according to the GAL, passed from the 13th to the 19th century through many hands: Securo, Drimi, de Specula, Cito, Bartilotti, de Liguoro. Giacomo Arditi, at the end of the 19th century, called it a town “that does not smack of the rustic but of the grave and the civil”. The Bartilotti left the most visible mark: according to the Ministry of Culture's Art Bonus record, at the beginning of the 17th century they commissioned the Colonna di Sant'Andrea, Baroque, with a Corinthian capital, the statue of the patron saint at the top and at the base the four cardinal Virtues, three of them headless; the restoration, agreed with the Soprintendenza, is reported as completed. The church of Sant'Andrea, from the late 18th century, has a Renaissance bell tower; the Casa Turrita, an old defensive structure turned into a dwelling, was restored in 2012.
Acquarica del Capo, 10 km from the Ionian Sea according to the GAL, preserves a 12th-century castle and the church of San Carlo Borromeo, with a seventeenth-century façade in Lecce stone and an organ from 1872. The journey closes at the Celsorizzo masseria. Here the GAL record lines up more than five centuries: in 1283 Giovanni di Ugento had the chapel of San Nicola di Mira built, 7.8 metres by 3.7, with 13th-century frescoes, a Christ Pantocrator, an Annunciation, a Last Supper; in 1545 Fabrizio Guarino bought the masseria from Claudio Lubello for 3500 ducats, in 1550 a dovecote tower was built, and 1807 is carved on the lintel of the stables. The journey, in our proposal, ends here.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 9 defects corrected · not approved