Cavallino · Castri di Lecce · Lizzanello · San Pietro in Lama · LE
Four municipalities in the province of Lecce, and a thread that the sources read support: three of these towns appear in the sources, or are reborn, as casali linked to Lecce. Cavallino, according to the Ministry of Culture's record, rises again as a casale in the County of Lecce; Castri, by gift of Count Tancredi in 1190, and San Pietro in Lama, by gift of King Tancredi at the end of the 12th century, pass to the Church of Lecce. Lizzanello comes in by another route, that of Cosimo De Giorgi, the scientist born here who described, the FAI writes, the Valle della Cupa. The hypothesised theme, “countryside and historic centres”, holds only in part: the historic centres have three ministerial records, the countryside appears only in the Valle della Cupa, described by the FAI, and in the olive trees of Lizzanello. In our proposal it is a three-day journey, for those who read a town by its plan and its dates more than by its monuments.
At a glance
Duration. 3 days.
The route
Day 1 — Cavallino
We begin from an artificial terrace ten metres high, the Balcone sulla Storia, which according to the museionline portal serves as the entrance to the park of the Museo Diffuso, opened in 2003 on the site of a Messapian settlement. Of the place, the Ministry of Culture's record on the historic centre reads a long sequence: a first occupation in the Middle Bronze Age, between the 16th and 15th century BC; after a long abandonment, a village of huts in the 8th century BC; towards the middle of the 6th a great fortified circuit and, inside it, a city with quarters of masonry houses and tiled roofs. Then, at the beginning of the 5th century, a sudden abandonment, and for centuries only agricultural use. According to the same museionline portal, the MUDI, opened in 2015 in a former nursery school restored by the Municipality, tells the story of that transformation of the 6th century BC, and the museum also includes the experimental reconstruction of a house of the same century; the settlement was identified, in the second half of the 19th century, by Sigismondo Castromediano. Today's town has another origin: from the end of the 13th century, the record says, the De Noha permanently reoccupy the site and the new centre grows around the feudal palace; towards the middle of the 17th century the fief passes to the Castromediano, and in 1806 the abolition of feudalism in the Kingdom of Naples brings municipal autonomy.
On the square named after Sigismondo Castromediano the record points to the Palazzo Ducale, with a frescoed gallery and the chapel of Santo Stefano, the Chiesa Matrice and the well of San Domenico; a few hundred metres away, the former Dominican convent, in Lecce stone, now home to the Università del Salento. Wikipedia, to be re-checked, adds dates that the record does not give: Matrice begun in 1630, well from 1633. The same encyclopedia attributes to Gianserio Strafella the paintings of a chapel in the palace. Strafella's name sets up the following day: according to Wikipedia, in 1882 a man born in Lizzanello counted him among the few truly eminent painters of Terra d'Otranto.
Day 2 — Castri di Lecce and Lizzanello
At Castri even the name is double. The Ministry of Culture's record speaks of two ancient nuclei, Castrifrancone and Castriguarino, a “physical and administrative splitting” of the settlement; the historical name Castriguarino remains in use until 1891, then the town becomes Castri. The first sources are from the Norman period: in 1190 Count Tancredi d'Altavilla gives the casale to the Church of Lecce. The town, the same record notes, belongs to the diocese of Otranto. In the 15th century a castle dependent on Roca passes, by gift of Queen Giovanna II, to Agostino Guarino; in 1617 the fief belongs to Bernardino Cicala, and in 1707 Domenico Adriani owns “the two Castri”. Of Guarino's castle the sources read do not say what remains. The photographs in the record show Palazzo Castri and the Chiesa della Visitazione; the main square, according to the record, is Piazza Municipio. Wikipedia records the town's Griko name, τα Καστρία.
Lizzanello, in the sources read, is poor in documents. The italia.it portal calls it land suited to the olive tree and to oil, and points to the Church of San Lorenzo Nuovo, built in the 16th century and remodelled, with a Baroque façade and two bell towers, the chapels of the Immacolata and of the Annunziata, and a castle later turned into a noble residence, with neither name nor date. Well documented, on the other hand, is the town's son. Cosimo De Giorgi was born here on 9 February 1842, according to the Università del Salento; having graduated in Medicine at Pisa in 1864, in 1867 he returned to Lizzanello to look after his family during the cholera and gave up specialising abroad. From then on he studied the Salento: in 1874 he founded the Meteorological Observatory of Lecce, drew the first geological map of the Salento, discovered the Roman Amphitheatre in the centre of Lecce. Treccani recalls his Note geologiche sulla provincia di Lecce, from 1876. The Municipality, according to Wikipedia, has named after him the middle school and the street in which he was born; in the hamlet of Merine the same encyclopedia points to the baronial palace Palmieri-Magliola, of the Palmieri, lords from 1613. It was De Giorgi, the FAI writes, who at the end of the 19th century described as “a sea of greenery” the valley to which the following day leads.
Day 3 — San Pietro in Lama and the Valle della Cupa
The Valle della Cupa is, according to the FAI, a valley of karst origin, inhabited since about 2500 BC; on the heights stand the specchie, and some, in the Middle Ages, became outposts with tower-masserie on top, such as Vittorio at Lequile; ancient roads crossed it linking the two seas. The FAI lists it as a place of San Pietro in Lama, and the Ministry of Culture's record places the town in the same depression. King Tancredi, towards the end of the 12th century, gave the centre to the bishop of Lecce, and for centuries San Pietro in Lama was a “casale de corpore” of the city. No baronial residence, the record notes, and an “open” layout, grown in blocks around the churches. The original nucleus was perhaps the block of Sant'Antonio, a quadrilateral bounded by a centuriation boundary road that separated it from Lequile; via XX Settembre ends with the chapel of Sant'Antonio Abate, probably the first sacred building.
The Matrice was built by 1546 between the borgo of Sant'Antonio and that of San Nicola, attested from 1574 and grown until the end of the century; to the same period the record assigns the Borgo dell'Amendole, on the block of San Giovanni, with the church of San Pasquale Baylon, and between the 16th and 17th century the block of Santo Stefano, with the church of the same name. In the 18th century the noble palaces occupied via Roma, via Pisacane and via Garibaldi. Wikipedia sees in the Chiesa Madre a typical example of Lecce Baroque: it is that source's judgement. Among the finds of the valley the FAI cites the archaeological area of Cavallino, and the journey, in our proposal, closes like this, with the countryside leading back to the first day.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 12 defects corrected · not approved