Melendugno · Vernole · Caprarica di Lecce · LE
Three municipalities in the province of Lecce, between the Adriatic and the plain east of the provincial capital. The theme hypothesised at the start, “stone and coast”, holds only halfway: no source read speaks of stone for these places, while the coast is there, and it is the real thread. The pages of the Municipality of Melendugno tell of a sea that for centuries was a threat: Roca destroyed several times by those who came from the water, then dismantled in the 16th century and left by its inhabitants, who moved also to Vernole; watchtowers and fortified masserie linked in a defensive network, according to the Municipality. Melendugno has rich sources; Vernole and Caprarica di Lecce have few, and there the story grows shorter. It is a journey for those who read a territory through its defences, without hurry.
At a glance
Duration. 4 days.
The route
Day 1 — Roca Vecchia and Roca Nuova
We begin by the sea, at Roca Vecchia, which the tourism portal of the Municipality of Melendugno describes as a stratified site, with evidence from the 17th century BC to the 16th century AD. In the Middle Bronze Age a fortified city stood there, with monumental walls still visible; in the Recent and Final Bronze Age a second one; both, the page says, were destroyed several times by raiders who came from the sea. The University of Bologna, which has been conducting a surface survey here since 2019, recalls the Bronze Age port open to exchanges with the Aegean-Mycenaean world. In the first half of the 14th century Walter VI of Brienne rebuilt the city on the ruins, with castle, walls and church. The reason for the end is written on the same municipal page: from 1480 the Ottoman corsairs attacked this coast several times, and between the middle and the end of the 16th century the governor of Terra d'Otranto had the fortifications dismantled, as part of the coastal defence plan. The inhabitants moved to Borgagne, Melendugno, Vernole and Calimera; others founded Roca Nuova. Today one can see the Middle Bronze Age walls, Messapian walls and tombs, the triangular castle; the finds are in the Museo archeologico “S. Castromediano” in Lecce. Nearby, according to the University of Bologna, opens the Grotta della Poesia Grande, linked to the Piccola by an underwater passage: in 2018, a newspaper reported, the Municipality temporarily closed access to it because of the risk of the cliff collapsing; the current situation is not verified.
At Roca Nuova, founded by the refugees, the small castle is a tower with a moat and a drawbridge. In the semi-underground prison, the Municipality reports, there remain graffiti of a knight, of galleons and brigantines, and the marks drawn to count the days. The village was abandoned in the 19th century, after the Turkish attacks and malaria. The next day we follow the line of the towers.
Day 2 — San Foca, Torre Sant'Andrea and Borgagne
The tower of San Foca dates from 1568, like that of Sant'Andrea. In 1577, the municipal portal reports, Angelo Candido, procurator of the università of Melendugno, armed it with a bronze falconet; by night it communicated with fires and by day with smoke, towards Torre Specchia Ruggeri and towards Roca. It is the only tower in the municipal territory restored in recent times, in 1975, according to the Municipality. That of Sant'Andrea, armed in 1578 by the mayor of Borgagne Andrea de Jacobo, cannot be seen today: it is partly destroyed, partly incorporated into the Navy lighthouse, and beneath the lighthouse a rock-cut settlement is threatened by erosion. Inland, at Borgagne, the defence has a carved date. After the capture of Otranto in 1480, the Municipality writes, the Byzantine casale of Pasulo was destroyed, and in 1497 Baron Bellisario Petraroli of Ostuni built the circular tower to defend the village, with the family coat of arms and a Latin inscription recording its date; the rest of the castle, rectangular in plan with an atrium and a moat, followed at the beginning of the 16th century. In 1528 Bellisario sided with Lautrec against Charles V, and in 1531 he lost the fief. In 1630 the castle was painted in the canvas of the Madonna del Rosario in the mother church of Borgagne. In the historic centre, eight courtyard houses with the portal, the “samportu”, and the shared courtyard for the carts. The next day we go to the main town and its countryside.
Day 3 — Melendugno and the fortified masserie
The mother church of Maria Santissima Assunta was built in 1575, according to the municipal portal. The sixteenth-century façade bears the statue of the Assunta; inside, the altar of the Madonna del Rosario and the wooden ciborium are by Aprile Petrachi, a stonecutter from Melendugno also active in the Santissimo Crocefisso of Galatone. Here since 1882 the relics of San Niceta il Goto, the patron saint, have been kept, whose cult was spread by the Basilian monks. Of the abbey of San Niceta, of Basilian origin, the foundation in 1167 is reported by Jacopo Antonio Ferrari, in the 16th century, and the Municipality calls it uncertain; in 1392 it depended on San Nicola di Casole and had possessions at Roca, Pasulo, Acquarica, Acaya and Vernole. Of the Norman structure little remains: the barrel vault is from the 15th-16th century, like the frescoes, among them a wounded Christ dated 1563 with the motto “mors mea vita tua”. In the countryside the defence continues in the fortified masserie, which the portal links to the network of coastal towers against the raids of the 16th century: Tricero, from the 14th century, with a circular tower and a machicolation; Coviello Grande, from the 15th century, and Coviello Piccolo, nineteenth-century, on the border with Vernole. That border is the passage to the last day.
Day 4 — Vernole, Acaya and the Cesine; Caprarica di Lecce
On Vernole itself and on Caprarica the sources read are few and, for Caprarica, only private ones. The link with Melendugno is given by the sanctuary of the Madonna di Roca, whose crypt of 1656 commemorates the martyrs: according to the Municipality of Melendugno, Vernole goes there on pilgrimage on the last Saturday of April. In the hamlet of Acaya, according to the FAI record, Gian Giacomo dell'Acaya, royal engineer of Charles V, began the rebuilding of the village, fortified, a “model of the ideal city”; the record says it is being restored by the Municipality of Vernole and the Province of Lecce; the dates of the works change from one source to another. The form can still be read, according to Wikipedia: six parallel streets running north to south, 4 metres wide and about 17 metres apart from one another, crossed by three east-west streets. Towards the sea, in the Municipality of Vernole according to the WWF which manages it, lies the Cesine reserve, a Ramsar site designated on 6 December 1977: temporary ponds, Aleppo pine woods, holm-oak wood and coastal marshes, the last stretch of those that ran from Brindisi to Otranto, with 32 species of orchids and about 180 species of birds.
The Città dell'Olio record calls it a casale of the Norman County of Lecce, then a fief of the Orsini del Balzo, the Adorno, the Giustiniani and the Rossi; the Giustiniani marquises commissioned in 1701 the church of the Crocifisso, in the form of a Latin cross. In the castle, according to the Dimore Storiche Italiane association, the room of the patriot Antonietta De Pace is preserved. Wikipedia recalls that the poet Antonio Verri was born here and that the town also has a name in Griko, Κραπάρεκα. The journey, in our proposal, ends here.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 9 defects corrected · not approved