Greek Salento

The Natural History Museum of Calimera , born in 1984 and reopened to the public following a restructuring in 2002 , deals with the study and protection of the environment through recovery actions and monitaraggio wildlife . The museum is divided into five structures : the Natural History Museum ; Insectarium ; Welcome Centre exotic wildlife abandoned ; Provincial Wildlife Observatory ; Wildlife Studies Centre .
The museum displays artifacts related to six sections : Astronomy , Botany , Embryology and Teratology , Geology , Malacology and Marine Biology , Mineralogy .

As ” eco-museum ” the structure must represent ” tangible and intangible assets of the surrounding area .” For this reason, the exhibition space is organized so as to tell the story of Carpignano Salentino and the surrounding area from the age preistoica , which are reported in the important evidence . The museum is organized into different sections : Virtual Reception Centre , exhibition of artifacts , Ecomuseum widespread , Library and Media Library , Educational workshops and multimedia , Laboratory of Memory and Documentation Centre.

Traditionally it refers to the establishment of the treasury of the Basilica of St. Catherine of Alexandria to its founder Raimondello Orisini Dodge that led to Galatina prezione works and relics from the East following a pilgrimage to the Holy Land where he visited the Shrine of Saint Catherine ‘ Alexandria on Mount Sinai . The treasure was then donated to the Franciscan community during the construction of the basilica . Among the most valuable treasure we find a marble relief of the Madonna and child of the thirteenth century ; the reliquary in gold with the finger of St. Catherine of Alexandria ( XIV – XV century ) ; icon -made micro mosaic depicting Christ Pantocrator.

The museum , in the historic center of Galatina , is named after Peter Cavoti , writer and painter who dedicated his life to the study and preservation of the Basilica of St. Catherine of Alexandria . The museum was set up to his death by Cosimo De Giorgi . The museum was embellished with donations of books by Raffaele Torricelli , grandson of Cavoti , who also donated the illustruazioni uncle on the Church of St. Catherine , and thanks to Francesco Bardoscia , which not only gives a miscellany of objects and works of art , supporting the restoration and the construction of the museum on the ground floor of the Palazzo Orsini .

The Park of the fossils is located in a disused clay quarry out Cutrofiano, in which you can find various geological strata of marine origin, rich in fossils. The Museum of Clays is instead set in a house adjoining the quarry, consisting of two rooms, the first exhibition with showcases housing the fossils of gastropods, bivalves, escafopodi; the second about teaching with a meeting center, a point projections and a model of the hollow section.

The ceramics museum was established in 1985 by the Municipality of Cutrofiano in order to enhance an activity typical of the country since ancient times . The initial collection of pottery craft has gradually enriched through donations and new purchases .
Today the museum is divided into four sections : a historical and archaeological ; an art history ; an anthropological ; a technology . Inside the structure was also set up a space that reconstructs the old shops ; a photo gallery illustrating the steps of firing ceramics and reconstruction of a home environment .

The Museum of Rural Life and Culture Griko is located in a typical old courtyard house of Calimera , and is prepared and edited by the Cultural Ghetonia . The museum is organized on various environments within which are placed objects and tools typical of the life and history of local life . The museum is divided into several rooms , each of which presents a particular theme : the kitchen ; the House; the countryside; crafts and traditions ; history , archeology , architecture .

The Museum of the Hand Embroidery and Lace, within the Baron’s Palace of Castrignano of the Greeks there is an exhibition of products made by women needle Salento nineteenth century to the present day , the testimony of a typically feminine today living in Salento .

The Multimedia Museum of Greek Salento was set up inside the Castle of Corigliano d’Otranto to tell the story of the territory . Through multimedia stations you can listen to traditional folk songs , see period films and learn about digital archives , virtual reconstructions of ancient structures etc.

The House Museum Tarantismo is located in the center of Galashiels. The idea of the museum , connected to the ” Centre for Studies on tarantismo ” which is based on the structure , born from the ancient tradition of the city for which the galatinesi were immune from evil identified as the ” bite of the tarantula .” This particularity meant that in Galatina , and in particular in the small chapel of St. Paul , were marked by all the territory the ” tarantate ” to heal miraculously , from this obscure disease . The museum contains a beautiful photo , video and audio that tells , in years not too far away , just these pilgrimages to the church .

The cave church of Santa Marina and Cristina in Carpignano Salentino is the structure of this oldest of Salento, built in IX-XI century AD The crypt, dug in the bedrock, has an irregular shape that is accessed via two wide staircases. The structure is divided into two sections. The eastern, largest, is related to Santa Cristina, while the smallest in the west to Santa Marina. In the first section there are four pillars of which one original file, while on the northeast wall two apses.
The original dedication is related to Santa Cristina, but the presence of the cult of the second holy meant that in the tradition of the church was known by both names. In the section dedicated to Santa Marina, on the left, we find a wall-pillars that form a secluded corner where devotees, according to tradition, went to urinate to prevent and treat jaundice who was tied as the Holy healer.
Scholars speculate that the structure in the Byzantine period was a chapel with two aisles two apses. In the second half of the fifteenth century chapel it is dedicated to Santa Maria delle Grazie after the discovery of an image of the Virgin. Some interventions were made at the end of the eighteenth century as a result of some miracles.
Of particular importance are the frescoes that decorate the interior walls of the church, important examples of Byzantine painting in Puglia, like the famous depiction of Christ blessing in throne flanked Annuziata the Virgin and the Archangel Gabriel. The fresco is inscribed in greek with the name of the buyer, the priest Leo, and his wife Crisolea, the name of the painter, Theophylact, and the date, 959 AD At this stage of decoration follows a second, commissioned by a character named and dated April 1020 (enthroned Christ blessing, the Virgin Kyriotissa, Santa Cristina, which appears several times in the decoration). At the bottom left is the tomb arcosolium frescoed, with metrical inscription in greek, the young Stratigoulès, whose soul was entrusted by his father in Santa Cristina, San Nicholas and the Virgin Kyriotissa.

On the outskirts of the town of Castrignano of the Greeks there is the small crypt of St Onofrio, dated between the sixth the XI century.
The church takes its name from a monaco hermit came all the way from Thebes, ancient province of Upper Egypt. The church was demolished in 1800 and the crypt was buried. She came to light in the sixties to an intervention of the City.
The structure consists of two rooms dug into the limestone accessible via two flights of stairs they place in the larger slot. The latter, of rectangular shape, is divided into two parts, one reserved for the celebrant and the other faithful. The vaulted ceiling is supported by 18 columns made of local stone; presents a lithic altar and frescoes on the walls, of which only faint traces. He recognizes a Virgin and Child with traces of the halo of a saint dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
The second compartment is accessed via two open passages in the wall behind the altar. On the ceiling, a hole in the vault may have served in the past as access Hypogeum.
Note the holy water, with inscription in greek the date, 1275.

The Mother Church of Galatina is dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul , patron saints and protectors of the city . It is not certain the date of the founding of the church , around the middle of the fourteenth century , when in Galatina , as in other centers of Salento , is still officiating in greek rite.

The cave church of Our Lady of the Grotto, on the outskirts of Galatina, is also called the Crutta, or the Assumption of Grotti. The structure, carved into the rock, has a plant trapeizoidale four aisles with apses separated by quadrangular columns. The numerous interventions suffered from the crypt over the centuries, with the construction of partition walls, changed the original appearance of the structure.
Around 1300 the cave church is built a church with a single hall with beamed ceiling and frescoes, placed on most orders, on the walls. From the church to the crypt via a wide staircase.
The interior of the crypt is decorated with frescoes on two different stages: one on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to which refers the fresco of the Virgin and Child in an oval altar of the seventeenth century; a Virgin and Child at the entrance to the ambulatory; Virgin between two archangels armed with spears, at the end of the ambulatory. The seventeenth century are a Saint Lucia now very visible and, in the three niches in back of the church, the Annunciation, dated 1679, a Crucifixion and Santa Marina; between the right niche and the central one still a Virgin and Child

The crypt of St. Anne, located on the outskirts of Galatina, is formed by a projection posthumously masonry with a pediment decorated with a stone cross. The interior layout with three naves does suggest a date around the XII-XIV century. Following the construction of the nearby farm, the church was transformed and enriched by a masonry facade. From this, through an opening arched accessing the dromos that leads directly to the central hall. To the right an opening leading to a lower second environment that continues in a tunnel now closed.
The whole church is whitewashed and small painted panels are of recent invoice and very touched: the altar a Virgin and Child, a Crucifixion, an Our Lady of Sorrows and St. Dominic. On the walls were once painted a picture of St. Anne.

The Basilica of St. Catherine of Alexandria in Galatina is considered one of the most important monuments of medieval Puglia . The church was expanded on an existing , from Raimondello Orsini del Balzo.

A few kilometers from Martano have been brought to light the remains of the medieval village of Apigliano, known only from a few documents, the oldest of which dated to 1354. The recent archaeological campaigns carried out by the University of Salento have highlighted a village, founded in the Byzantine period, between the ninth and tenth centuries AD on the site of a small rural settlement of Late Antiquity. The village seems to have a period of neglect in the XI-XII century before returning to live in the XIII-XIV as the house of Apigliano and be finally abandoned in the XVI. The excavations have brought to light some structures from the Byzantine period, including a furnace for iron working, and substantial traces of the house including a small church with adjoining cemetery Angevin. Not far away is the church of San Nicola, rebuilt in the archaeological park using ancient techniques. A second church, dedicated to San Lorenzo, was built when the house had already been abandoned.

The small church of Santo Stefano in Soleto, built in the mid-fourteenth century, is of particular importance in the context of Salento as it combines elements of Byzantine Eastern influence with Romanesque and late Gothic typical of Puglia. Until the sixteenth century the church was a religious center Italo-greek of considerable importance

The small church of San Pietro in Sternatia , dug into the rock , has a floor plan with a single hall separated from the presbytery iconostasis . The construction period , between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries , dating back to small traces of fresco still visible . For a second phase of wall decorations on the XVIIII century , belongs instead the image of St. Peter that gives its name to the structure .
Today the church is attached to Masseria Caraffa .

Ancient crypt of San Sebastian, in the territory of Sternatia , you can see the remains of the entrance stairs that led inside the dug in the rock . The main entrance to the west , was closed due to the recent construction of buildings and has been replaced by an alternative access to the South . The building has a square floor plan with a large central pillar in rock that divides the area into two aisles and four bays . The floor is dirt . Along the walls and the base of the pillar runs the seat. Inside there are three altars , two oriented east and one in the north , among which there is a niche with a small border . The walls of the crypt are decorated with frescoes that date , according to the inscriptions , between the beginning of the twelfth and the end of the sixteenth century .

The small Church of St. Paul , in the center of Galatina , a few meters from the Church of Saints Peter and Paul , is linked from the Middle Ages to the present day , to the phenomenon of tarantism .
The chapel was rebuilt in the early eighteenth century , and is built inside Palazzo Tondi . Presents a classroom only vaulted to Lecce . Inside you can admire an altar of the eighteenth century with the painting of St. Paul with a sword in hand .

The Mother Church of Castrignano of the Greeks, dedicated to the worship of the Annunciation, was rebuilt in 1878 on an existing building of the sixteenth century. The old church was demolished to build a wider, more spacious for the increased population that made it too narrow the previous structure.

Castle Castrignano of the Greeks, of medieval origin, today presents the appearance that he gave him, in the sixteenth century, the family Gualtieri, remembered in the epigraph on the portal of entry. The structure has a rectangular base with slope and consists of facade of two orders divided by a bull string course. Other changes suffered in the nineteenth century, aimed at ingentilirne the prospectus and the inner courtyard.
Excellent means of defense, as well remembered even in the days of Charles I of Anjou, the structure until the nineteenth century was surrounded by a moat. Interesting decoration are the gargoyles and the two heads facing south.
Entering from the portal entrance leads to a courtyard around which there were some service areas: the stables, the oven and the oil mill and warehouses. In an environment it is a kind of hidden passage / walled from which, according to tradition, is reached through a tunnel, with the abbey cave church of Sant ‘Onofrio. Through a portal decorated with floral motifs, angels and gargoyles, it leads to the main floor.

The Mother Church of Calimera, located in the central square, is dedicated to the patron San Brizio. On an original structure with two aisles, was built, starting from 1689, the present church a Latin cross and a single nave, with a linear table divided into two tiers characterized, the lower, the baroque portal and the upper by a large window central.

The Church of San Vito, built in the late fifteenth – early sixteenth century, is located in the countryside east of the cemetery, at one of the entrances of the ancient Forest of Calimera. The small church has a single aisle in the middle of the floor a large limestone boulder with a central hole, and on top of the remains of a fresco depicting San Vito Martire, called the Sacred Rock of San Vito. It is traditional to go to church on Easter Monday to purify or to propitiate fertility, welfare etc. passing through the hole, the diameter of only 30 cm, the megalite. This ritual of ancient origin, is linked to magical-religious beliefs probably linked to pre-Christian rite of the Great Mother and the cult of fertility. The passage of the hole, which recalls the female genital organ, recalls the concept of birth, or rather, of rebirth. Christianity absorbed the cult, building around the monolith church and connecting it to the cult of San Vito.

In the open countryside , on the road linking Calimera Melendugno , there is the small church of San Biagio , a semi underground eleventh century , due to a wider Basilian settlement . The chapel was in fact probably the religious reference of an abandoned farmhouse . Inside are two eighteenth century frescoes depicting St. Blaise and Saint Eligius , relative to the stage where the chapel was restored and the upper floor was built accommodation for the monks . The building was abandoned , the consecration stone removed , and was transformed into a barn , until recently when it was restored .