THE CAVE CHURCHES OF MONOPOLI

Villa Trullo dei Mori is located 35 minutes from Monopoli.

In area surrounding Monopoli, as in many other areas of Puglia, from the eighth century to the fifteenth century, rock settlements were built by monastic communities from Greece, and around which underground villages were dug into the tuff. In the urban area there are numerous cave churches with refined Byzantine frescoes, well worth a visit are those of the Madonna del Soccorso, of Santa Maria Amalfitana and that of San Leonardo. Other cave churches can be found out of inhabited centers, complete with altars, columns and iconostases as per oriental tradition. One of the largest rock settlements in Puglia is the Lama D'Antico Rock Park in Fasano, where you can find the cave churches dedicated to Saint John and Saint Lawrence with their walls embellished with frescoes reproducing the eponymous saints, in a fairly good state of conservation. A significant example is the cave church of the Holy Spirit, with its three naves, sculptured as the others in the rock and leaving, almost to support the vault, rustic columns with different capitals. In the Crypt of San Giovanni di Staveta, St. John the Baptist and a Madonna Odigitria (the one who indicates the direction, Madonna dell’Itria, hence the name Valle d'Itria) are depicted.
Within the Lama degli Ulivi Botanical Garden, in addition to a large underground oil mill, the most important place of worship of the Monopoli countryside is hidden, where the cave church preserves what once were the rich decorations that used to covered the walls.

THE BAROQUE LECCESE

Villa Trullo dei Mori is less than an hour's drive from Lecce.

Lecce also known as the capital of the Baroque is full of monuments, churches and gateways.
Porta Napoli and Porta Rudiae gateways are the access points to the ancient village, the historic center where you can look up and admire the facades of buildings, balconies and portals embellished with sculptures. The large Piazza del Duomo, paved with ancient limestone slabs, the Cathedral’s sumptuous side facade and its high Zimbalo Bell Tower, the fifteenth-century Palazzo del Vescovado characterized by the angular arcaded loggia and the Palazzo del Seminario dating back to the 1700s, now home to the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art, the Innocenziana Library and the Diocesan Historical Archives, represent the most exuberant testimony of this art which can still be admired in Via Palmieri in the portal of Palazzo Marrese, where you can see two couples of female figures supporting the balconies of the first floor. Walking through the streets of the center you will come across the Church of Santa Maria della Provvidenza and that of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli in Piazzetta Addolorata. In Via Umberto I, you can admire the sixteenth-century Palazzo Adorno and the Basilica of Santa Croce, symbol of the city and of Lecce's Baroque, you then reach the heart of the city, the elegant Piazza Sant'Oronzo, the center of the city’s life where you can admire the famous column of the Patron Saint, right next to the spectacular Roman Amphitheater.

ROMAN PERIOD: VIA APPIA & BRINDISI

Villa Trullo dei Mori is located just 30 minutes from Brindisi.

The Salento peninsula, formerly called Messapia by the ancient Greeks, "Land between two seas", was inhabited by the Messapi, a population of Illyrian or Aegean-Anatolian origin. The pre-Roman history of Salento is the history of the rivalry between the Messapian and Taranto populations. The secular war between the Messapi and Taranto, is said to have favored the Roman conquest of the entire Salento.
In consideration of the period in which it was built (around the third century BC) the Via Appia is considered the regina viarum (queen of all streets), one of the greatest civil engineering works of the ancient world, built by the Romans, for the enormous economic, military and cultural impact it had on the society of that time. It originated in Rome and ended at the port of Brundisium, today's Brindisi, and was one of the most important ports in ancient Italy from which the trade routes to Greece and the East originated. To emphasize the importance of the Via Appian roadway, at the end of the road, near the port of Brindisi, two monumental identical marble columns nineteen meters high were placed at the end of an imposing staircase. Following the collapse of one of the two columns in 1528, the monument remained mutilated, but you can still admire the remaining “resilient” column, whose original capital is exhibited in one of the rooms of the Granafei Nervegna Palace.
In Brindisi you can be amazed by the Cathedral (built around the 11th century), by the Temple of San Giovanni al Sepolcro erected in the 11th century as a copy of the Rotunda of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, by the Castello Alfonsino, also known as "Fort at Sea", built in the seventeenth century right on the sea, and by the archaeological excavations of San Pietro degli Schiavoni, which brought to light the remains of the ancient district of Roman civilization, clearly visible beneath the New Verdi Theater.
The Church of San Paolo Eremita is the oldest and most eloquent testimony of Gothic architecture of the fourteenth century in the provincial area, but it is impossible to describe all the churches present in every corner of the city as there are so many.
Like all settlements born in Roman times, whether they are small towns or cities, even in Salento, the access to the heart of the village was possible through the Gateways. A beautiful example in Brindisi are Porta Mesagne and Porta Lecce.

SASSI DI MATERA

Villa Trullo dei Mori is 1 hour and 45 minutes from Matera.

The wonderful sights and emotions that the “Sassi di Matera” can offer us are a unique experience: leaving Trullo dei Mori without first stopping at the Sassi di Matera would be a real pity.
The Sassi, ancient aggregations of homes dugout into the limestone and tuff, are settlements deriving from the various forms of civilization and anthropization that have occurred over time, starting from the prehistoric ones of the entrenched villages of the Neolithic, to the hygienic-social degradation of the nineteenth century, to the displacement ordered by the national law in the 1950s, up to its restoration starting as from the 1986 law, to today.
The Sassi are the distinctive feature of Matera: these homes carved into the stone close to a deep ravine, the called the "Gravina", were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993.

UNESCO SITES

Thanks to its strategic position, in less than two hours by car from Villa Trullo dei Mori it is possible to reach all the sites that Unesco has promoted as a World Heritage Site in the Puglia region, in addition to the Sassi di Matera in Basilicata.

- Castel Del Monte, located between Corato and Andria, built with an octagonal plan, is unique in its kind of medieval military architecture and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.
- The trulli of Alberobello, prehistoric buildings characterized by circular plans, with white dry stone walls, small windows and conical roofs, became part of Unesco in 1996.
- The Sassi of Matera and the Park of the Cave Churches became a World Heritage Site in 1993.
- The Sanctuary of San Michele Arcangelo, located in Monte Sant’Angelo, in the province of Foggia, was included in the Unesco lists in 2011. The Sanctuary origianlly founded in a cave in 490 AD is a complex of buildings dating back to different historical periods and built around the natural cave where the 4 apparitions of St. Michael the Archangel took place.
- The Umbra Forest Nature Reserve became a Unesco site in 2017 and is located in the Gargano National Park, which extends for about 400 hectares at an altitude of 800 meters above sea level.
- Castel Fiorentino, in Torremaggiore (Foggia): the archaeological site has brought to light the ruins of an ancient city built by the Byzantines around the year 1000 and from which the tower, partially preserved, stands out.

FROM NEOLITHIC TO THE PIZZICA TRADITIONAL DANCE

Important testimonies left by our ancestors such as the presence of megalithic constructions in the area, like the Dolmens (a specific type of tomb made with huge blocks of rock composed of at least two vertical slabs supporting a horizontal one), the Menhirs (huge monoliths dating back to Neolithic being astronomically oriented, intended for the celebration of cults) and the Specchie (from “specula” which means observatory, possible from on the top of these piles of stones). These structures, in the following centuries, were used for the cult of Christianity. These typical buildings are scattered everywhere, in the Itria Valley and in Salento, especially concentrated in Zollino and Giurdignano areas.

A historical treasure of considerable beauty is kept in the Cathedral of Otranto: the wonderful floor mosaic of the Great Tree of Life, an artwork created in 1163 that takes up the entire central nave up to the transept. The figure of King Arthur, the winged griffins, Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and other allegorical images linked to the culture of time are easily visibile in the mosaic.

Remaining in the south and passing through Galatina on the Ionian Sea, a visit to the Basilica of Santa Caterina d’Alessandria in Galatina is a must, you can admire the splendid 1400’s frescoes painted in the fourteenth century. The basilica, built to house a relic from Palestine, is strongly linked to the "tarantati" - persons who while working in the fields were probably bitten by venomous spiders and scorpions. They would travel to the basilica to ask for healing, and the hysterical contortions of the alleged disease were exorcised by the rhythm of tambourines and the rhythmic plucking of guitars. Rituals that now belong to the past and the tradition nowadays is evoked by the pizzica, a dance that in its movements makes explicit reference to the tarantati of Galatina and that we can see during the long summer evenings, at parties, squares and festivals of many towns in Salento and Valle d'Itria, the dance is interpreted by local women but also by fascinated tourists.