The civic coat of arms of Soleto is characterized by a sun probably because the name of the village could come from the Italian word ‘sole’ which means sun. The menhirs of Soleto and some tools dating to the Age of Bronze can tell us that this village was inhabited since the prehistory. Soleto is as far from the Adriatic coast as from the Adriatic and is 19 km far from Lecce. This area was very important for the exchanges with the Greeks. Soleto belonged to an area where the Greek culture was dominant. The religious Greek rite was substituted with the Latin only in 1598 thank to the priest Angelo Arcudi. The village grew in the messapic period and went on in the Roman period. In the Middle ages the village was ruled by several families, the first were the Brienne, then came the De Castros and the Tussis. The Del Balzos ruled the village up to 1463 when their last descendant died. Ferdinando d’Aragon bought the feud from the king and gave it to Luigi Campofregoso in 1479. Several other families have been at the head of the village, for instance Tommaso Barono, Castriota Scanderberg, Sanseverino, Carafa and Brayda. In 1615 the Spinellis took the rule of the feud until 1806 when the feudal system came to an end. We do not know exactly when the walls of this village were built (in 1269 or 1334) but, whenever this happened, four doors were built too: San Paolo’s Door, San Gaetano’s Door, Sant’Antonio’s Door and San Vito’s Door but only ths last one is still there today because the other three have been destroyed. Among the famous people of Soleto we can remember: Francesco Arcudi, Niceta Attanasio, Francesco Scarpa. the most famous among them is Matteo Tafuri. He was probably born in 1492, he took his degree in France at the Sorbonne University and became a famous philosopher and scientist. He went to Germany, Poland, Ireland Great Britain and Spain, probably he saw also Asia and Persia but this is not for sure. He wrote many books but only few of them have survived. He loved his village and was loved and appreciated by the inhabitants of Soleto. He changed his name in Matteo from Soleto and opened a school where he taught Latin , Physics, Greek and so on. He probably died in 1585.