Where they prayed in Greek

Calimera · Martano · Martignano · Sternatia · Zollino · LE

Five towns of the Grecìa Salentina, all in the province of Lecce and all in the Unione dei comuni that bears that name and has its seat at Calimera. The thread is a language and a rite. According to the Unione, Greek religious arrived here in the Byzantine age, the Greek clergy then held out only in a few centres, and griko, a “Hellenophone language” handed down “only orally”, is still spoken in some towns. It must be said honestly that the sources read tell this story well at Martignano, Sternatia and Zollino, while on Calimera and Martano they are scarce: the website of the Comune of Calimera could not be opened, that of Martano has no historical pages. The grouping of the five towns is our own choice. It is a journey for those who love small towns and the traces of a language preserved by voice.

The route

Day 1 — Calimera and Martano

We begin from a stone that came from far away: a marble funerary stele of the 4th century BC which, according to the Unione dei comuni, the city of Athens gave to Calimera in 1960; italia.it presents it as a testimony of common lineage. For the Unione the town remained “completely Hellenophone” until the end of the nineteenth century, and Calimera is among the few centres, with Otranto, Gallipoli and Nardò, in which, according to the Unione's historical notes, the Greek clergy then remained active. On the origins the record does not choose between Byzantine colonisation and Magna Graecia roots; on the outskirts it indicates the Pietra di San Vito, Neolithic. The singular detail is a nickname: charcoal was made from the woods, and the inhabitants were called “Carbonari”. In the town there are the Casa-museo della Civiltà contadina e della Cultura grika, at via Costantini 52 according to the italia.it portal, and the Museo di Storia Naturale del Salento, which for the Unione is also the Province's wildlife observatory for sea turtles and other animals in difficulty. Of churches, feudal lords and feasts the sources read say nothing.

Calimera and Martano lie, for the Unione, on the Via Traiana Calabra, which connected Brindisi, Lecce and Otranto; at Martano the road crossed the Otranto-Galatina-Gallipoli axis, and a stretch of it re-emerged during the works on the square next to the castle. The Ministry of Culture record reads the historic centre as a nucleus of elliptical plan, enclosed by walls, moat, towers and a castle, which in the seventeenth century expanded owing to “strong demographic growth”. Outside the town the Unione indicates the Specchia dei Mori, megalithic, and 3 km away a Byzantine-Angevin rural settlement, excavated since 1997 and now an archaeological park; towards Borgagne the monastery of Santa Maria della Consolazione, where the Cistercians have been since 1926 thanks to a bequest of baron Angelo Comi and cavaliere Cosimo Marcucci; in the monastery the amaro “San Bernardo” is produced. Since 2017 Martano has presented itself as “città dell'Aloe”. The rest, in the sources read, is missing. The same road leads to Martignano.

Day 2 — Martignano

Martignano too, writes the Unione, rises at a crossroads, between the Traiana Calabra and the Roca Vecchia-Nardò road, and the ministerial record describes its settlement as “ovoid in shape”, gathered along via Chiesa. The Comune relates that in the 9th and 10th centuries Greek-Byzantines and Basilian monks populated or repopulated the territory by cultivating it, and that the Greek rite, still officiated in the seventeenth century, “began to be abandoned” around the middle of the century: with the archpriest Francesco Giannuzzo, elected in 1650, the unbroken series of archpriests of the Latin rite begins. The griko name, Martignàna, has remained. The first documents are Angevin, from the second half of the thirteenth century, when Martignano and Sternatia were given together in fief to Simone Belvedere, husband of a daughter of King Charles I; from the sixteenth century the Pignatelli, Palmieri, Pisanelli and Granafei succeeded one another. Here was born, on 5 May 1721, Giuseppe Palmieri, who from 1791 directed the Supremo Consiglio delle Finanze and wrote, among other things, Della ricchezza nazionale (1792). On piazza Palmieri the chapel of San Giovanni Battista is entirely frescoed with two cycles, the life of the Baptist and Christ with apostles and disciples; Santa Maria dei Martiri, of the first half of the sixteenth century for the Unione, preserves Baroque altars and the canvas of San Pantaleo by Pasquale Grassi.

The saint also gives his name to the water. In the lower part of the town, where rain stagnates, the municipal pozzelle known as the wells of San Pantaleo ensured the water supply for centuries. On 26 July the papier-mâché statue goes out adorned with gold and money; the Comune recalls a relic of the blood that arrived from Ravello in 1763 and the pilgrims, above all from Nardò, who linked healing from malaria to the saint. On 16 November the “focara” is lit in memory of the hurricane of 1718. Between 1808 and 1832 Martignano was joined to Sternatia, the next stage.

Day 3 — Sternatia

The bell tower of the Chiesa Madre can be seen, writes the Unione, “from kilometres away”: four square orders and a last octagonal one with a majolica dome, completed in 1790 beside the church of Maria Santissima Assunta, rebuilt at the beginning of the eighteenth century in place of a smaller one. In griko Sternatia is called Chóra, and the Unione describes it as one of the principal centres of the Hellenophone area in the Byzantine era, with walls, castle and bastions; it also recalls the Basilian abbey of San Zaccaria, where books were copied, without giving its dates. On the remains of a Byzantine castle, next to the Chiesa Madre, stands Palazzo Granafei, Baroque, of the first half of the eighteenth century, with Rococo frescoes of mythological subjects on the first floor: the name is the same as that of one of the feudal families of Martignano. The Dominican complex was founded between 1491 and 1513; the present building of the church, dedicated to Santa Maria di Tricase, is of 1709, and the quadrangular cloister of the convent today houses the town hall. The italia.it portal adds that in 1480, during the Turkish siege of Otranto, the town was the headquarters of the troops of Alfonso of Aragon, future king of Naples; and it recalls an underground olive press of the fifteenth century where the “trappitari” worked for months without coming up. From a town that hosted an army to one that hosted a school.

Day 4 — Zollino

The last day opens on two sundials, which the Comune points out with a Latin inscription on the outer walls of the church of Santi Pietro e Paolo. According to the Unione the church was of Byzantine-Greek origin and was rebuilt on a Latin cross plan at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Zollino, in griko Tsuḍḍinu, had at the end of the fifteenth century a school of Greek: the Comune relates that Sergio Stiso, a priest of the Greek rite and a humanist trained at the library of San Nicola di Casole, kept a school and a copying centre there, and that in 1491 Giano Lascaris, sent by Lorenzo de' Medici, visited him, commissioning transcriptions now in the Biblioteca Laurenziana. A poet also wrote in griko, Domenicano Tondi, author of “Glossa. La lingua greca del Salento” (1935). Water, as at Martignano, came from the pozzelle, in griko ta Frèata, perhaps eighteenth-century: wells from 3 to 7 metres deep, with dry-stone coverings similar to trulli and proper names such as lipuneddha or scordari; via Chiga used to be called via Pozzi.

Between Zollino and Martano, of the vanished hamlet of Apigliano there remains the little church of San Lorenzo, “A Laurenti” in griko, rebuilt in 1582 with a Greek inscription and traces of frescoes; popular tradition attributes the abandonment to vipers, and the Comune presents it precisely as tradition. Among the traditional agri-food products the Comune lists the dwarf pea, the fava bean of Zollino and the sceblasti. The journey, in our proposal, ends here.

DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 8 defects corrected · not approved