Otranto · Uggiano la Chiesa · Santa Cesarea Terme · Diso · LE
Four municipalities in the province of Lecce, from Otranto southwards in our sequence; one, Uggiano la Chiesa, is not included in the coastal Park. The hypothesised theme, coast and castles, holds only in part: the sources read document the castle of Otranto and that of Casamassella, a hamlet of Uggiano la Chiesa, and no castle at Santa Cesarea Terme or at Diso. The thread that holds better is another: the gaze towards the sea and towards Otranto. Uggiano, its Municipality writes, grew up around a watchtower defending the city; lookout towers also mark the coast of Otranto and of Santa Cesarea; and three of the four municipalities lie in the same regional Park. It is a journey for those who enjoy reading floors, crypts and cliffs, and who accept that for Santa Cesarea and Diso the account stays brief.
At a glance
Duration. 4 days.
The route
Day 1 — Otranto, the cathedral and the martyrs
You enter the cathedral of Santa Maria Annunziata walking on a tree. The floor mosaic, according to the Municipality's official tourism portal, was commissioned by Archbishop Gionata and made between 1163 and 1165, under William the Bad, with tesserae of local limestone; it bears the signature of Pantaleone. From the central tree of life branch out subjects one does not expect in a church: King Arthur beside Cain and Abel, Alexander the Great carried to heaven by griffins, Diana and the stag, the Tower of Babel, the months and the zodiac, a mermaid. The church, on a Latin-cross plan, measures 53 by 25 metres, divided into three naves by fourteen marble columns; below, the 11th-century crypt has 48 bays and more than seventy supports of ancient and early medieval origin, with the fresco of the black Madonna Odegitria beside the altar. The reason for many things, here, is 1480. The Municipality recalls the Ottoman siege of July, the fall of the city on 12 August and the martyrdom on the Colle della Minerva on 14 August; the martyrs were canonised in 2013. During Turkish rule, the portal writes, the cathedral was turned into a mosque; after the liberation Archbishop Serafino da Squillace had the Renaissance rose window made, and the right apse was enlarged, where the remains of the martyrs lie in seven marble cases under a Baroque arch commissioned by Archbishop De Aste, the same one responsible for the gilded coffered ceiling. The next day you leave the city towards its defences.
Day 2 — Otranto, castle, towers and cape
The Aragonese castle has a pentagonal, irregular plan, a moat and three cylindrical towers at the corners, according to the Ministry of Culture's record, which attributes its design to Ciro Ciri with Francesco di Giorgio Martini. The side that matters is the one facing the sea: in 1578, with the outer bulwarks, a pointed bastion was added on the seaward side, with the coats of arms of Antonio De Mendoza and of Don Pedro da Toledo; over the portal is the coat of arms of Charles V. The same logic of watchfulness continues outside the city. The Torre del Serpe, now a ruin, stands on a promontory to the south at about 35 metres above the sea; for the municipal portal its origin is uncertain, but from the 16th century it became part of the system of coastal towers, in contact with Otranto and with the Torre dell'Orte. The singular detail is in the civic coat of arms: the serpent coiled around the tower, which a legend links to a reptile that stole the oil of the lighthouse. At Punta Palascìa, the lighthouse was built in 1867, inaugurated in 1869 and abandoned in the 1970s because of automation; it stands on a cliff of almost one hundred metres, on the promontory that the portal indicates as the easternmost in Italy. At Porto Badisco, about 11 km south of Otranto, is the Grotta dei Cervi, discovered on 1 February 1970 by five speleologists of the “Pasquale De Lorentiis” group of Maglie: scenes of deer hunting, spirals and handprints painted with bat guano and ochre. It cannot be visited, to protect its microclimate. Tomorrow you go to Uggiano, the village that kept watch over the city.
Day 3 — Uggiano la Chiesa and Casamassella
Uggiano appears in documents of the 13th and 14th centuries as “Ojano” or “Osciano”. Its bond with Otranto is written in the history given by the Municipality: in June 1219 Frederick II gave the hamlet to the Archbishop of Otranto, and the Church of Otranto held it until the abolition of feudalism in 1806. In the village the parish church of Santa Maria Maddalena, according to Wikipedia, has a Baroque façade completed in 1775, an inlaid wooden choir of 1796 by Raffaele Monteanni of Lequile and a cycle of the Maddalena by Oronzo Tiso. At Casamassella the castle still shows a battered wall, machicolations and an 18th-century balcony with grotesque masks; the municipal project on the village reconstructs its succession from the Sambiasi to the Maramonte, the De Falconibus, the Rondachi of Otranto, the Spanish governors of the 17th century and the De Marco, whose name and property passed by adoption to Raffaele, founder of the De Viti de Marco line. From that house came the economist and meridionalista Antonio De Viti de Marco (1858-1943) and his sister Carolina, who founded a lace school; the thread reaches the Fondazione Le Costantine, founded in 1982, where weaving is still done on four-shaft looms. Outside the village, in the Valle dell'Idro, the Byzantine crypt of Sant'Angelo preserves a stone iconostasis with three openings, a sign of the Eastern rite, and frescoes in two layers, probably of the 12th and of the 13th-14th century. Visits are not indicated. The next day, in our sequence, Santa Cesarea and Diso.
Day 4 — Santa Cesarea Terme and Diso
At Santa Cesarea Terme the reason lies beneath the cliff. The regional portal describes waters of about 30 degrees, rich in sulphur and iodine, used for cures since the 16th century, and a 19th-century spa development with the summer residences of families from Lecce; four sea caves, Gattulla, Fetida, Solfurea and Solfatara, are named by this portal and by a private magazine. Villa Sticchi, eclectic with Moorish elements, is private and is seen from the outside. At Porto Miggiano, in the same municipality, a circular 16th-century tower belonged to the lookout system, within sight of Castro and of Santa Cesarea. Diso receives a few lines, from private sources to be re-checked: the church of Santi Filippo e Giacomo bears a dedication of 1758, has a façade in carparo from the quarries of Ortelle and a 25-metre bell tower of 1903, rebuilt after the hurricane of 10 September 1832; in the territory of Diso, which includes the hamlet of Marittima, the same source mentions the church of the Immacolata of 1664 and the Vardare menhir, T-shaped with incised crosses. Santa Cesarea, Diso and Otranto, according to the Park Authority, are part of the Parco naturale regionale Costa Otranto–Santa Maria di Leuca e Bosco di Tricase, established in 2006: cliffs and dry grasslands, endemic species such as the Salento pink and the Leuca cornflower, pajare and towers. Uggiano is not included in it. The journey, in our proposal, ends here.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 8 defects corrected · not approved