Grottaglie · Montemesola · Monteiasi · Carosino · TA
Four municipalities in the province of Taranto and a theme that holds only halfway. Ceramics, in the sources read, belong to Grottaglie: the Ministry of Culture's record notes there a quarter of workshops with jars and amphorae stacked up from the sixteenth century onwards, and that is where the journey stops longest. The countryside links the other places more soberly: the encyclopaedia sapere.it associates Grottaglie and Montemesola with the wine grapes of the Aleatico di Puglia DOC, in Montemesola the Ministry describes houses with a basement now used as a cellar, in Carosino the FAI tells of a fountain that pours wine at the end of summer. Monteiasi, on the other hand, remains almost silent.
At a glance
Duration. 3 days.
The route
Day 1 — Grottaglie, the castle and the ceramics quarter
The first day opens in front of the Castello Episcopio, in largo Maria Immacolata. The name says whose it was: the Ministry of Culture's record describes it as born as a country residence of the bishops of Taranto and later incorporated into the town walls, in works promoted by Archbishop Giacomo d'Atri. According to the same record, the inhabitants of the nearby hamlets had taken refuge in the caves to escape the Goths and Saracens; Grottaglie, with the hamlets of Salete and Misucuro, then passed to the archiepiscopal mensa of Taranto, and under the Angevins the surrounding hamlets drew in towards the centre for safety. Of the walls, a few stretches remain beside the castle, and one of the three recorded gates, to the east, was called Porta San Giorgio or Porta Castello. The portal italia.it describes a rectangular fortress with a crenellated three-storey tower, now owned by the Diocese of Taranto and granted to the Municipality, and places there the Museo della Ceramica, opened on 22 December 1999, with works from the 8th century BC to the present; a record of unverified provenance writes that since 2017 “the exhibition” has been housed in the former Capuchin convent, without making clear whether this means the museum: the location should be checked before setting out.
The quarter that the ministerial record calls “li cammen're”, that is “the chimneys” according to sapere.it, runs along the gravina San Giorgio according to italia.it, and there jars and amphorae have been stacked since the sixteenth century. The detail to look for lies below street level: italia.it and Finestre sull'Arte describe workshops and kilns set in spaces dug into the rock that had been olive presses, and sapere.it links the tradition to the good local clay, noting that some artisans still work in the caves. In 2021, the publication wrote, the reopened workshops numbered more than fifty. The next day moves from the workshops to the churches.
Day 2 — Grottaglie, churches and gravine; then Montemesola
The morning begins at the mother church of San Ciro, which the ministerial record and sapere.it date to the 11th-12th centuries; the encyclopaedia describes its Apulian-Romanesque portal and, inside, the chapel of the Rosary of 1709, decorated in Baroque forms. The religious orders mark another phase: the Ministry dates the arrival of the Carmelites to 1520, that of the Minims to 1536 and that of the Capuchins to a few years later, when the town was still growing inside the walls. In the church of the Carmine, sapere.it and Wikipedia agree, there is a stone nativity scene by Stefano da Putignano dated 1530. Outside the town the ground opens up: the ministerial record speaks of gravine and karst caves.
In the afternoon, Montemesola, which the Ministry's record places on a hill of the south-eastern Murge, at about 180 metres. The layout of the town has an author: the marquis Andrea Saraceno had the dilapidated dwellings demolished and created the present streets and squares. From the Palazzo Marchesale the main streets set out, closed by the gates of San Gennaro and San Francesco de Paola; of the town gates three out of four remain, San Martino to the north, San Gennaro to the west, San Francesco de Paola to the east. Before that there was an abandonment: the fief is attested from 1320, in the fifteenth century it had walls and a castle, and according to sapere.it it was left because of Turkish raids and then repopulated by Albanians, whom the Ministry too indicates as inhabitants of the centre. The detail is in the houses: the record describes dwellings of agricultural layout with a basement that originally sheltered livestock and now serves as a cellar. The FAI notes in the Gravina di Montemesola traces of human presence from the Neolithic to the first half of the twentieth century and a waterfall that forms in rainy periods. The following day leads to the last two towns.
Day 3 — Monteiasi and Carosino
Monteiasi receives few lines, because the sources read document neither churches nor palazzi to visit there. What remains is an administrative portrait: the Prefecture's inventory kept at the Archivio di Stato di Taranto lists, among others, files on the access road to the station from 1909 and on drinking water in the Twenties: in our reading, signs of the town's twentieth century. Wikipedia notes to the west of the town the masseria Palummara, with an archaeological complex from the Neolithic to the Roman conquest: a fact to be re-checked.
Carosino, according to the ministerial record, is a lowland centre where of the old nucleus the Castello d'Ayala remains, from which a quadrangular square opens with radiating streets; the ducal palace is now owned by the municipality. According to the Ministry the feudal lord Raimondo De Noha allied himself with the Orsini of Taranto in the revolt of 1462 against the King of Naples, and in the fifteenth century Skanderbeg's Albanian armies razed the hamlet to the ground. The Ministry and the FAI agree on the first mention in the Angevin registers, in 1348, and the FAI recalls a small hoard of 76 silver coins found in 1904; the FAI also recalls that in 1875 the Marulli sold their lands, together with the Palazzo Ducale, to Roberto d'Ayala Valva. In 1885, the ministerial record reports, G. Arditi counted five mills and 418 houses here. The parish dates to 1763 the enlargement that gave the Chiesa Madre its present appearance, with the high altar moved from east to south, and recalls the bull of Pius X of 12 August 1908 on the patronage of San Biagio. The journey, in our proposal, ends in the square named after Vittorio Emanuele III, in front of the Fontana del Vino: according to the FAI it was inaugurated in December 1894 with water from the Pozzo Buono spring, has four pressure taps and, since the early Sixties, during the Sagra del Vino it pours wine instead of water.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 11 defects corrected · not approved