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THE RURAL
AND COASTAL LANDSCAPE
Crossing
the sunny roads of the Salento you can see a lot of dolmens and menhirs  near the
inhabited centres or in the country, hidden by the macchia mediterranea. The
two words derive from the Breton, "dol"= table, "men"= stone,
and "hir"= long: the dolmen is a composed structure of a series of
rocks lying vertically on the ground and there is another stone on them; the
menhir is a square monolith, some meters tall also fixed into the ground.
Generally the opening of a dolmen and the widest faces of the menhir look at
East-West, so they might have had an astronomic meaning and been closely
connected to the cult of the God Sun. In some cases (Stonehenge or Carnac in  France), the astronomic reference is clear since these monuments point out the
direction of the rising of the Sun in the solstices and in the equinoxes, the
positions of the moon in the different months of the year and, according to some
researchers, even the eclipses of Sun. For most researchers these special
buildings had a religious value and were connected to the cult of the dead, or
to human sacrifices. In Europe this phenomenon spread out between 4500 and
1800 B.C. during the Bronze
Age, especially in Sardinia and in
Apulia, where there are around 150 megalithic monuments (north of Bari, Taranto
and Lecce). These constructions can be seen above all
between Lecce and Otranto, Giurdignano
and Minervino of Lecce. In many cases the Catholic Church has tried to oppose to
the left pagan cults linked to the menhirs and dolmens, putting a cross on these
stones.
"Pariti" and
"Pajare"
One
of the main characteristics of the Salento is the presence of long dry stone
small  walls that bound the fields. The constructive techniques are the same of
those of the past: two rows of stones constituted
the base; other smaller stones were put into the central band. The height could
be different and it was connected to the function of the wall, defined "parite"
at Leuca: in fact, these small walls not only marked the borders of the fields,
but they were often built to protect the trees from the wind and, in the coastal
places, from the saltiness. The Apulien rural landscape has got another characteristic element:
the "trulli", called by the populations of the Salento "pajare."
They are generally dry-stone buildings conical-pyramidal
shaped made with the same stone used
for the small walls
mentioned above. The constructive technique was not very dissimilar, except for
the dimensions of the base, that could reach three meters of thickness, and the
use of small quantity of earth to
fill the central air space and cement the whole structure better. The thickness
and the care with which they were built transformed the "pajare into
authentic shelters above all in the summer time, when the temperatures are very high.
These special
buildings were never used as permanent residences. Only in particular periods of
the year, usually when the harvests were abundant, the farmers lived in the
"pajare" for some time;
the time left they were a deposit for the tools. Unfortunately
the job of the "paritaro" , that is who builds the "pajare"
has disappeared : due to the increasing mechanization of the country, the small
characteristic walls are now abandoned and many of them have been replaced by
common bricks whose
maintenance is easier. In
the last few years there has been an inversion of tendency but it is still very
difficult to find some skilled
manpower.
A
Masseria is a typical building of the Salento: it was usually built in the open
country and was inhabitated by the "massaro" , that is the man who
managed the lands  belonging to the owner of the masseria (just a
few hundreds of hectares). It could be made of simple rooms
or of articulated structures that looked like those of the urban
architecture, so in some cases they can be defined
monuments of the country civilization of the Salento. The farms
represented the only form of rural permanent installation.
Due to the physical characteristics of the territory, the elevated
fragmentation of the land ownership, the frequent
raids of pirates and gangs of brigands, the country residences were
concentrated in small
centres, and the farmers
used to go everyday from their residences to the country. This is the reason for
which in the masseria there were only the massaro, his family and those who had
to prepare and sell the milk. Quite the type of
economic activity influenced the
plant of the masseria: in Lecce and
in Brindisi, where the main activity was the production of oil , you can still
find a lot of subterranean oil-presses called by the people of Salento "trappeti,"
while in the area around Nardò and Taranto where the sheep-breeding was
widespread inside there were big
enclosures. In the most southern part of the peninsula, finally, above all
between Ugento and
Leuca, the farm
did not have a particularly complex structure  since people were poorer. One of
the most characteristic aspects of the masserie near the coast is their
strengthened appearance that often makes them
similar to the towers of defence. Indeed the were fortified because of the
frequent piratical raids that uninterruptedly
went on from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth one. The Turks attacked Gallipoli in 1430 and in 1524.
In 1480 they razed to the ground conquered
Otranto killing 800 inhabitants; in 1537 Castro,
Marittima and Tricase were destroyed; in 1543
Presicce was besieged to. The
population were always frightened and the fear was so strong that still today it
is possible almost to perceive it in
some dialect expressions ("mamma, gli Turchi" that means "Oh my
God! The Turks"). So above all in the sixteenth century, the fear that
these raids could lead to an abandonment of the country villages, induced
the nobles to invest at their own expenses in the defence of their lands
since the Angevin, Aragon and Norman defensive systems was not efficient. The
typical structure is that of the tower made of two or three floors, with
masonries that in some cases are three meters large. The upper floors were
isolated  through a ladder lowered from
the trap doors in the floor ( in
the simpler structures), or with suggestive staircases in external masonry whose
final floor was represented by a drawbridge (in the more complex buildings).
There were some trap doors from which the besieged
they could throw stones or boiling oil and they were connected with doors or
windows. Sometimes there were some
underground passages that allowed the besieged to run away from the
masseria and hide in the surrounding country. In case of alarm, the fortified
masserie constituted the link of
conjunction among the towns and
the coastal towers. These constructions, even if they are not as complex
and rich as other similar buildings present in other regions of Italy, prove how
much the dominant classes  (religious and secular)
of the epoch were rich. In fact, at the beginning
the masserie were built almost exclusively for agricultural and defensive
uses, but later they became the summer residences of the most well-to-do classes.
For this reason they were decorated with many
architectural elements as the Giudice Giorgio Masseria in the territory of Nardò, that looks like a castle. In the Salento there are about two hundred
fortified masserie and they can be seen above all near Lecce,
Nardò and Leuca. The
dovecote towers were frequently associated to the masserie. Externally they had
much in common with the coastal
towers: the "palombari" represented
a substantial part of the income of the owner, but they were above all what we
call today "status symbol", since it gave a great
social prestige, particularly for the use of the pigeons during the
shooting. Frederic II loved this activity a lot and many nobles got fond of it.
This type of towers were protected by a some laws and nothing could be dome
without the authorization of its owner. In the sixteenth century the Earl of Palmariggi, because of his several debts, was forced to abandon his farm, and as
he did not want to give someone else his tower he made it demolish. In the XVI
century the  construction of towers increased a lot above all for the good
economic situation of that period, so the noblemen decided to invest a lot of
money for . Many testimonies in this sense could draw it from the registrations
that are on the entries of the towers, like that of the tower of the Celsorizzo
Farm in the territory of Acquarica del Capo
of the Head, dated 1550. The dovecote towers
have got usually a circular or square plant and can be seen above all near the
"Neretina" zone and
in the hinterland of Lecce, Otranto and
Leuca. They have loopholes and a superior battlement that, however, is substantially conceived as a roost for the pigeons. These
special buildings are marked by the presence of some niches,
big enough to let the pigeons stay there. It was easy to arrive at these
niches thanks to a helical staircase that was made of a stone different from
that of the wall. The external  walls were always painted white in order to
attire the pigeons and there were some drinking through for them as well. The
care with which they were built was closely connected to the big economic value
: a dovecote tower could house one thousand
couples of pigeons that reproduced four or five times a year, and
therefore they constituted a conspicuous reserve of fresh meat. Besides
the guano of the pigeons was rich of nitrogenous elements so it could be used as
a fertilizer. Now there are eighty dovecote towers more or less and they were
abandoned some years ago, but they are still a great evidence of our past.
The
coastal towers
From
the XIV century the raids and the attacks of the Turkish pirates and of those of
 the African coasts along the coasts of the Salento increased and a lot of people
had to leave their houses and took refuge in the hinterland. In
the XII century the first system of coastal
defense was built: the towers could easily be seen
and they communicated the danger of an invasion
with the smoke during the day and the
fire during the night. when
the alarm ceased the towers were completely abandoned until the arrival of the
Turks. The viceroy Don Pedro Toledo
made a lot of new towers build in order to protect the 
coasts from the continous
attacks of the ennemies: nonetheless because of the threat of an imminent
invasion the sovereign could
not pay the workers, and what is more the quality of the materials was not good;
that is why after only thirty years the
coastal towers were already damaged or collapsed.
But the
construction of the new defensive system caused the increase of the
fiscal pressure and the discontent of the
subjects, above all of those people who, living in the hinterland, did not fear
the Turks. Two different types of towers were built: the Cavallare Towers (for
the alarm) and those for the defense; the first were so called because there
were some men riding a horse, the "cavallari," that used to patrol the
villages of the Salento. They went from tower to tower and they played the
English horns or they fired
off a shot to 
announce the
incumbent danger. They went to the
hinterland as well, to the small inhabited centres, and informed the farmers of
the danger and told them to take a refuge near the towers or in the woods. The
“cavallari” were elected openly by the local administration and the governor
of the territory in which the tower had been built; their assignment lasted
three years and were divided into “ordinary” and “extraordinary”: at the
top of the hierarchy there was the “sopracavallaro" (the leader) that did
not take part in the alarm operations. The salaries varied from four dukedoms
per month (to the ordinary “cavallari”), to six a year (to the “sopracavallaro”).
Their job was more fatiguing prevalently from the spring to the summer, when the
threat of raids  increased because that was the most favorable period for the
navigation. As in the other months of the year the vigilance could decrease, the
cavallari had to pay a fine for each “inefficiency”. The low salary often
led them even to betray their own people and form an alliance with the pirates. The
technique of construction of the tower was very similar to that used for the
pajare: the structure was built without scaffolding or framework, only
predisposing some earth and stones corresponding to the volume of the available room. Then the farmers built a
circular or square wall and the dome; after that they built another wall that
was filled with stones. The
ground floor was completely closed, there was only
a trap door from the upper floor. This room was sometimes a jail, but
often it was used as a store where to preserve the cereals or as cistern of
water. The terrace was the zone of sighting: there were a small room where
probably the torriero took refuge during a storm or a fighting and wide trap
doors  from where the torrieri threw the stones or the boiling oil.
You
could enter a tower only through an inside wooden ladder. The external
staircases as that of Porto Cesareo, were built some years after when the
pirates had stopped to attack the Salento. The
most ancient towers built in the sixteenth century are cone-shaped and can be
seen above all to south of Otranto, while the towers built later were
square-shaped and they are especially near the Neretina area. They were usually
twelve meters tall, ten-twelve meters long outside and five meters. The
circular towers were erected at the end of the XVI century, as the Tower of the
Dead Omo of Leuca or that of
Salignano.
The coastal towers in the Salento
Departing
[adriatica] from the coast, they from the boundary with the province of Brindisi
meet:
Commune of Lecce
·
Specchiolla
Tower, three meters above the sea level
·
Rinalda
Tower, one meter above the sea level
·
Chianca
Tower, two meters above the sea level
·
Venneri
Tower, three meters above the sea level
·
St.
Cataldo Tower, five meters above the sea level
·
Specchia
Ruggeri Tower, five meters above the sea level
Commune of Melendugno
·
St. Foca Tower,
five meters above the sea level
·
Roca Vecchia
Tower, four meters above the sea level
·
Dell’Orso
Tower, sixteen meters above the sea level
·
Sant'Andrea
Tower, situated eleven meters above the sea level
·
Fiumicelli
Tower, five meters above the sea level
· Santo
Stefano Tower, fifteen meters above the sea level
·
Del
Serpe Tower, thirty meters above the sea level
·
Dell’Orto
Tower, thirty-four meters above the sea level
· Palascia
Tower, situated to eighty-two meters above the sea level
·
Sant'Emiliano
Tower, fifty meters above the sea level
·
Porto
Badisco Tower, fifteen meters above the sea level
· Minervino
Tower, sixty-six meters above the sea level
·
Specchia
La Guardia Tower, one hundred and fifteen meters above the
sea level
·
Miggiano
Tower, fourteen meters above the sea level
Commune of Diso
·
Diso
Tower
· Capo
Lupo Tower, Head Wolf, one hundred and five meters above the sea level
·
Andrano
Tower, seventeen meters above the sea level
·
Sasso
Tower, one hundred sixteen meters above the sea level
·
Porto
Tower of Tricase
·
Plane
Tower, fifteen meters above the sea level
·
Naspre
Tower, one hundred and twenty-nine meters above the sea level
·
Torre
Specchia Tower, one hundred twenty-seven meters above the sea level
·
Ricco
Tower, sixty-two meters above the
sea level
·
Porto
Novaglie Tower, eight meters above the sea level
·
Montelungo
Tower, eighty meters above the sea
level
·
Santa
Maria di Leuca Nuova Torre, situated sixty meters above the sea level
Going
from Santa Maria of Leuca to the Jonica Coast you can see:
·
Degli Uomini
Morti Tower (or of the Omo Morto),
eleven meters above the sea level
·
Marchiello
Tower, twelve meters above the sea level
Commune of Patù
·
San
Gregorio Tower, twenty-four meters above the sea level
·
Vado
Tower, two meters above the sea level
Commune of Salve
·
Pali
Tower
·
Mozza
Tower or Fiumicelli, two meters above the sea level
·
St.
Giovanni Tower, one meter above the sea level
·
Sinfono
Tower, sixteen meters above the sea level
·
Suda
Tower, ten meters above the sea level
·
Pizzo
Tower eight meters above the sea level
·
St.
Giovanni la Pedata Tower, four meters above the sea level
·
Sabea
Tower, six meters above the sea level
·
D’Alto
LidoTower, seventy-one meters above the sea level
Commune
of Nardò
·
Fiume
Tower, four meters above the sea level
·
Santa
Caterina Tower, thirty-two meters above the sea level
·
Santa
Maria dell’ Alto Tower, forty-nine meters above the sea level
·
Uluzzo
Tower or Crustano, thirty-two meters above the sea level
·
Inserraglio
Tower or Critò, three meters above the sea level
·
Sant'Isidoro
Tower, three meters above the sea level
·
Squillace Tower,
two meters above the sea level
·
Chianca Tower,
two meters above the sea level
·
Lapillo
Tower, two meters above the sea level
·
Castiglione
Tower, three meters above the sea level
·
Porto
Cesario Tower, two meters above the sea level
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