| Borgagne | ||
 | ||
| State | Italy | |
|---|---|---|
| Region | Puglia | |
| Territory | Salento | |
| Inhabitants | 2.076 (2011) | |
| Name inhabitants | Borgagnesi | |
| Prefix tel | 39 0832 | |
| POSTAL CODE | 73026 | |
| Time zone | 1 | |
| Patron | St. Anthony of Padua and the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel | |
Position
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Borgagne is a center of the Puglia.
To know
The town is surrounded by extensive centuries-old olive groves with which the extra virgin olive oil Terra d 'is produced.Otranto. At 7 km lies theProtected oasis of the Alimini Lakes.
The toponym of Borgagne derives from Borgo d'Agne, that is Borgo dell'agnello, as this locality was already called in the 14th century, characterized by purely agricultural-pastoral activities.
Geographical notes
4 km from the Adriatic coast, the village is a hamlet of Melendugno from which it is 6 km away; Lecce is 25 km away, Otranto to 17.
Background
The site was inhabited by Basilian monks who arrived between the 7th and 10th centuries to escape the persecution of the Greek emperor Leo III Isauric and the Muslim persecution in Sicily and Africa. The documents report Borgagne as a grancia dependent on the monastery of San Nicola di Casole (at Otranto), at the time the political, religious and cultural center of the Byzantine Salento.
The Basilian stay in Borgagne is evidenced by the remains of some crypts, more properly of the modest sized laurels, one of which is still visible on the Caliani hill. It was later transformed into an underground oil mill, losing many of the Byzantine frescoes on the walls. In any case, around these small places of prayer, dug into the rock, a first inhabited center was built, while in the surrounding countryside some hamlets were born, of which Pasulo is certainly the most important. The presence of the Basilians is also recognizable in the name with which Borgagne was appealed for a short time, namely Basel.
In the late Middle Ages (years 1314 and 1337) the noble Provençal family of Stendardo owned the fiefs of Pasulo and Borgagne respectively. Subsequently, when feudalism was established, the possessions passed from hand to hand to powerful foreign families. The De Iserio, who came from Barletta, they followed the Stendardos maintaining the fiefdom until the fights between the French and the Spanish who, in the second half of the fifteenth century, fought over the South. In 1463 Borgagne is subject only to the capitaneo of Lecce and in 1464 it was given to Gaspare Petraroli, a baron from Ostuni. In 1497 the original nucleus of the castle was erected in a high place and explicitly in defense of the town. This testifies to the existence of a real Borgagnese village, which certainly extended for the most part in the current streets "Castello", "Conciliazione Laterano" and "IV Novembre", in which Petrarolo had tower-houses built as garrison, still visible today. There is no doubt that these defensive measures had been made indispensable by the various incursions of the Turks, which only twenty years earlier had attacked Otranto and the very close Roca Vecchia, and they had also pushed against the surrounding farms.
In 1601 the fiefdom was sold to Vincenzo Maria Zimara, a wealthy Salento from Galatina, son of the most famous physician and philosopher Theophilus. The town, enlarged, was defined with the term of State of Borgagne, and also included the hamlet of Pasulo and the uninhabited fiefdom of San Salvatore. In 1616 a new passage took place: the buyers are now the Spinola, a very noble family that in the city of Genoa he had donated cardinals and Doges. From these, finally, the "State of Borgagne" was ceded to the Milanese Gallarati Scotti, who remained in the Salento area until the early nineteenth century, when feudality was abolished in 1806.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the town of Borgagne remained in a certain immobility. The population continued to be made up of a majority of peasants, with the exception of a few wealthy bourgeois. In the nineteenth century, however, the town was at the center of a great city mobilization for a bad redistribution of state-owned lands, subtracted from the baronial fiefs: above all for these reasons Borgagne, passed under the control of the nearby municipality of Melendugno, he often had a conflictual relationship with this. In 1860 it was embellished with a square, the one in front of the Mother Church, which however was built on the underground crypt of the Byzantine period, therefore inaccessible today. The urban landscape of Borgagne was characterized by the courtyard-houses (now visible in via Conciliazione Laterano) and by the “capande”, modest houses with a tiled roof. The whole surrounding area was, on the other hand, subject to the unsanitary marshland, a cause of malaria and high mortality. The swamps were then reclaimed in the Fascist period, and since then the town has seen a regrowth, especially after the 1960s.
How to orient yourself
Borgagne: full screen map.How to get
By car
The road connections affecting the municipal area of Melendugno and the hamlet of Borgagne are:
- State road 16 Adriatica, Lecce-Shirts.
- Provincial Road 3 from Melendugno and from Carpignano Salentino;
- Provincial Road 147 from Martano;
- Provincial Road 148 from the Sant'Andrea coast
- Provincial Road 366, San Cataldo-Otranto.
How to get around
What see
- Church of the Presentation of the Lord. Of the sixteenth-century building, consecrated in 1584, only the apse part shows. The sturdy portal, clearly of Neretine origin, dates back to 1611. The structure consists of a single nave covered with a vault only in 1780-1786, and has four altars, two on each side. The church was dedicated to the Presentation of the Lord, as can be seen in the Latin epigraph and the portal, which was preserved in the eighteenth-century reconstruction of the factory.
- It was Emanuele Orfano from Alessandria who built the altars and the stacks of the lustral water and the baptismal font. Of exquisite workmanship are the paintings that adorn the church: Madonna Immacolata and San Giuliano (1790), Virgin of the Rosary with the Saints in which a view of Borgagne from the first half of the seventeenth century is depicted and the coat of arms of the town consisting of two cornucopias surmounted by three ears and three eight-pointed stars, Martyrs of Otranto, Sant'Antonio da Padova, Sant'Oronzo.
- Also worth seeing are three colored stone statues of the Redeemer and the Archangels Michael and Raphael, originally placed on the high altar and a wooden tabernacle. Recent restorations have brought the apse vault, the altars of the Holy Souls and Sant'Antonio, the holy water stoup and the baptismal font back to their original original colors.
- Church of the Madonna del Carmine. The church dates back to 1619 and is what remains of the Carmelite convent inhabited until 1625. The simple facade, framed by two sturdy pilasters, consists of a small window placed in axis with the only access portal on which it is positioned. the coat of arms of the country. The single nave interior houses two side altars and the main altar; the latter, built in 1658, is characterized by a sumptuous Baroque decoration and houses the statues of Sant'Agata and Santa Lucia on the sides. In the apse area, which seems to belong to an older structure, there is a fresco of the Virgin in which, as well as in the painting of the Virgin of the Rosary in the mother church, a seventeenth-century view of Borgagne is depicted.
- Semi-underground "Sciurti" oil mill, via Lecce (XVI century).
- Court houses, via Conciliazione Laterano. Sixteenth-century examples of popular Salento architecture.
- Masseria Porcaccini. Built in 1618 and enlarged in 1770
- Masseria Giammarino (17th century).
- Masseria Baronali (late eighteenth century).
- 1 Petraroli Castle. Originally it stood on the edge of the small inhabited center, towards the east, in order to carry out its defensive function more effectively against the dangers coming from the direction of the sea.
- The complex has a rectangular plan which at the north-east corner partially incorporates a tower erected in 1498; the year is derived from the walled inscription with the noble arms of Petraroli on the west side of the tower.
- Later the castle was built, mentioned in 1531. In 1601 the fief and the castle were sold to Vincenzo Maria Zimara from Lecce and fifteen years later to Giovan Battista Spinola from Genoa.
- The castle has a square plan with a central courtyard and has undergone interventions and extensions, including recent ones, in relation to its current use as a private residence. At one time there were also slots, loopholes and a moat, before several renovations altered some parts of the building in an irreparable way. Of or pertaining to the castle is the small chapel of the Madonna of the Rosary.
- Tower-houses. The tower-houses are sixteenth-century buildings whose main function, in addition to housing, was closely linked to the defensive function of the town together with the castle. The most characteristic tower-house has hanging arches and an angular column with the monograms of Christ and the Virgin.
Events and parties
- Pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie in Roca.
third Saturday of May. - Hamlet. 24-25-26 June.
- Feast of the Madonna del Carmine. July 15-16.
- Fruit and vegetable festival. from 6 to 8 August.
- Feast of Saint Anthony. 28 and 29 August.
third Saturday of May.What to do
Shopping
The precious extra virgin olive oil Terra d'Otranto produced on site.
How to have fun
Where to eat
- 1 Big Mama restaurant, Via De Amicis 46 (Bed and Breakfast), ☎ 39 320 5792439.
Where stay
Average prices
- 1 The Casina di Borgagne, Via Circonvallazione Carpignano S.Andrea km. 1, ☎ 39 392 3218405.
Safety
Pharmacy
- 1 Conte Pharmacy, Via Colonnello Elia, 34, ☎ 39 0832 811095.
How to keep in touch
Post office
- 2 Italian post, via Venezia snc, ☎ 39 0832 811541, fax: 39 0832 811541.
