Melendugno - Melendugno

Melendugno is a city of Puglia.

To know

From 2011 to 2015 the Melendugnese marinas reconfirmed the recognition of the Blue Flag. It is part of the Authentic Villages of Italy.

Geographical notes

Located in Salento central-eastern, is positioned halfway between Lecce is Otranto, respectively 18 km and 22 km away. Agricultural center, it has a vast fiefdom and benefits from the considerable tourist flow linked to its marinas, located along the Adriatic coast of Salento.

Background

The first evidence of attendance in the Melendugno area can be traced back to the Bronze Age; the two dolmens Placa and Gurgulante, which can be identified in the immediate countryside in the direction of Calimera, date back to this period. The first real settlement is represented by Roca Vecchia. The site, frequented since prehistoric times, arose as a fortified city as early as the 15th-11th century BC. Rebuilt by the Messapian populations in the IV-III century BC, whose name seems to have been Thuria Sallentina, it was abandoned in Roman times and again inhabited in the early Middle Ages by anchorites, mostly from the Eastern Roman Empire, who over time formed a community , living in a series of caves carved into the limestone. At the beginning of the 14th century, Gualtieri di Brienne, count of Lecce, rebuilt Roca making it a fortified city, but in 1480 it suffered Turkish raids. Released in 1481, it subsequently became a refuge for Barbary pirates, so much so that in 1544 Ferrante Loffredo, governor of the province of Terra d'Otranto, gave the order to raze it to the ground. a small Roca Nuova village inhabited until the 19th century, when it was definitively abandoned due to the unhealthy conditions of the surrounding area.

As for the urban center of Melendugno, it seems to have originated around the 11th century with the arrival of the Normans, after the period of the wars between the Saracens and the Greeks. Under the Normans, the Basilian monks settled on the territory building crypts and abbeys and developing agriculture and literature. In Melendugno they founded the Abbey of San Niceta, the remains of which are represented by the small church located near the cemetery. As with the other centers of Salento, Melendugno also experienced feudal events. Around 1335 it belonged to the Garzya, then it was the turn of the Del Saba and De Palacis. In the 14th century it was bought by the Paladins, whose main branch was extinguished with the death of Giorgio Antonio in 1656. It passed to the Maresgallo and then in 1680 to the D'Afflitto who reigned for a short time as they were forced to sell the farmhouse to the D'Amely family. to pay off debts. The D'Amely family reigned over Melendugno until 1806, the year in which Giuseppe Bonaparte abolished feudalism in the Kingdom of Naples.

How to orient yourself

The historic center of Melendugno is characterized by the presence of frequent medieval courtyard houses consisting of a central courtyard overlooked by the various living environments.

Neighborhoods

Its municipal territory includes the hamlet of Borgagne; the Adriatic coast has expanding tourist settlements, such as Torre Sant'Andrea, Torre Specchia, San Foca.Melendugno is Borgagne (which are located inland) have developed agriculture more with immense olive groves scattered throughout the area.

San Foca is Torre Sant'Andrea they are two localities that have kept their size of small fishing villages. San Foca also has a new tourist port consisting of a 200-meter quay and 3 floating piers for a total of 150 berths.

Bear Tower is Saracen Tower they are two purely tourist resorts, with a large development of residential hotel-villages. However, the strong residential development has not damaged the landscape and uncontaminated nature, leaving an intact coast, where rocky reliefs alternate with fine sandy beaches.

How to get

By plane

• 40.657517.9469441 Salento Airport (Brindisi-Casale Airport, IATA: BDS), Contrada Baroncino (Toast). International airport about 70 km from Melendugno.  

By car

The road links that affect the municipality are:

• State road 16 Adriatica Lecce-Shirts.
• Provincial road 2, from Vernole;
• Provincial road 3, from Borgagne;
• Provincial road 29, from Calimera;
• Provincial road 145, from San Foca;
• Provincial road 146, from Carpignano Salentino;
• Provincial road 297, from Torre dell'Orso.

On the train

The city is not served by the railway, the Lecce station it is the closest (about 20 km) among those that make national service with Trenitalia, from this you can get to Melendugno by bus.

• 40.34555618.1661112 Lecce station. Trenitalia and FSE station about 20 km from Melendugno  

How to get around

What see

Churches

• 40.271618.33561 Church of Maria Santissima Assunta. The mother church of Maria SS. Assunta, dating back to the 16th century, originally had a single nave, the current central one, with a Latin cross plan. Inside, under the floor, there are nineteen burials. The eighteenth century represented a period of great transformations for the sacred building which was enlarged with two side naves and equipped with a bell tower (1696). In 1774, as the epigraph under the statue of the Assumption reveals, the façade with two orders was reworked while, at the end of the 19th century, the interior was enriched by a new choir and chapels dedicated to the Crucifix, the Sacrament and St. Nicetas. Inside are the seventeenth-century altars such as the one dedicated to the Madonna del Rosario, a work by Aprile Petrachi who also made the wooden crucifix, the frontal in painted Lecce stone depicting theLast Supper, part of the ancient high altar and the sixteenth-century door of the sacristy. 

• Abbey of San Niceta. The Abbey of San Niceta was founded in 1167 by Tancredi d'Altavilla and was ruled by the Basilian monks. Of the ancient abbey, dependent on the Monastery of San Nicola di Casole at Otranto, only the church and some ruins of the monastery remain visible in the presbytery area.

The church, with a rectangular plan and a square presbytery, has three Gothic arches that support the vaulted roof. The Gothic restructuring must have taken place around the end of the 15th century, a hypothesis confirmed by the dating of the triptychs frescoed in the arches of the left wall. Starting from the first arch, St. Anthony of Padua is depicted on the right, St. Paul in the center, St. Nicholas on the left, with a typically fifteenth-century setting. In the central arch there is a difficult to identify Saint, a Crucifixion and San Rocco. The last arch houses the frescoes of the Madonna and Child, of San Vito and Sant'Antonio Abate. At the bottom of the choir wall are the frescoes dated twice to 1563: the Crucifixion with the Virgin and St. John the Evangelist, the wounded Christ with the inscription Mors mea vita tua and the Madonna di Loreto depicted with the Child in her arms, according to traditional iconography. 

• 40.272618.33682 Church of the Immaculate Conception. The church of the Immaculate Conception was built in 1666 on the edge of the city walls and near the door leading to San Foca. Being therefore peripheral and in an exposed position it was deemed necessary to equip it with some defensive element. It was equipped with a sturdy and high parapet, which still exists, which, useless from an aesthetic point of view, was very suitable for offering shelter to those who, aiming at the loopholes made along the north, west and sirocco facades, had the task of react against the assailants. The portal, dated 1678, opening onto the east façade shows the minute characters on the entablature that pass on the original title of the church to San Giovanni Battista in four lines. The entire wall of the west side occupies the main altar which, dated to 1698, embeds the canvas of St. John the Baptist, the original titular, and those of the Immaculate Virgin, Santa Lucia and Santa Marina. The side altar dedicated to San Donato dates from a later period and was erected in 1777 at the expense of the devotees. 
• 40.271518.33883 Church of the Addolorata (of the Saints Medici). 
• Aedicule of the Madonna del Buon Consiglio. 
• Chapel of the Annunciation, via Roma. 

Various architectures

• Underground crushers ("trappiti"). They are underground caverns without light and dug into the limestone bank used for the production of olive oil. They were built underground in order to exploit the greater thermal constancy and protect the product from sudden changes in temperature. 

• 40.2705918.3365544 D'Amely baronial palace (Castle). The Baronial D'Amely Palace, also called castle, looks like a large polygonal tower built on a project by the famous military engineer Gian Giacomo dell'Acaya in the second half of the 16th century on commission by Pompeo Paladini, seventh baron of Melendugno and Lizzanello. The building's star plan finds only three comparisons in all of Puglia. The tower, once surrounded by the moat, stood isolated from the circle of medieval walls, which has probably become an ineffective defensive system.

12.50 meters high with 4.5 meter walls, it has an escarpment base and a facade divided by two string course bulls. Access was possible through a drawbridge, protected on the vertical by a machicolation. With the advent of the D'Amely barons, the drawbridge was replaced with a masonry one closed by a sixteenth-century portal surmounted by the noble emblem: two leaning and lying lions supporting a crenellated tower on the back. Above the coat of arms the statue of the Immaculate Virgin dominates. Near the tower were the baronial prisons, the food warehouses, the tower with a guardhouse and the small chapel on the ground floor which still preserves the frescoes of the Crucified Christ and one Madonna and Child. 

Megaliths

• 40.25858518.3093175 Dolmen Placa. Discovered in 1909, the dolmen rests on an outcropping rock bank and is 85 cm high. Features an uneven cover plate that rests on only 4 of 7 piers. This slab varies in thickness from 40 cm on the west side up to 17 cm on the east one. Two of the 4 orthostats have vertical lesions and a wild olive tree has replaced the static support function of the southern pier which has moved a few cm away from the slab. A 15 cm diameter and 20 cm deep cuppella is dug on the surface of the slab to the west. The opening of the megalith is located to the southwest. It is located on the provincial road to Calimera in the Placa fund. 
• 40.26832718.3213956 Dolmen Gurgulante. The dolmen is placed on a rocky outcrop and is 90 cm high. It has an opening to the northwest and a surface full of lichen formations and strongly corroded. The covering slab in the shape of an irregular rectangle (about 200 x 150 cm) has an average thickness of 30 cm and rests on 5 monolithic piers; the beveled corner to the east no longer has contact with the support orthostat. It is located on the provincial road to Calimera in the Gurgulante area. 

Natural Structures on the Adriatic

The territory of Melendugno overlooks the sea with a coastline of over 15 km between Torre Specchia to the north and Torre Sant'Andrea to the south. The coast, characterized by a succession of beaches, inlets, dunes and coves and by the presence of flat islets in the northern area and stacks in the southern one, hosts large areas of pinewood and various shrub species of the Mediterranean scrub. From the Melendugnese coast it is sometimes possible to see with the naked eye the Albanian island of Saseno and the mountainous reliefs ofAlbania.

• Cave of San Cristoforo. The cave of San Cristoforo is located in the bay of Torre dell'Orso. It opens into the rock wall on the south-eastern side of the bay and looks like a rectangular excavation, probably carried out between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. The cave was frequented in different historical periods and the internal walls still retain some Greek, Latin and medieval inscriptions. The cavity was frequented by navigators and merchants who were preparing to cross (or had just crossed) the Otranto canal, expressing to God, through these inscriptions, vows, dedications and invocations. 
• 40.28585518.4295777 Cave of poetry, Roca Vecchia.  
• 40.25701518.4436798 Faraglioni, Sant'Andrea.  
• 40.26982818.4369489 The two sisters, Tower of the bear.  

Coastal watchtowers

The coast of the municipality of Melendugno hosts five watchtowers all built in the second half of the 16th century.

• 40.32774318.37513510 Torre Specchia Ruggeri. It is a seaside resort located on the Adriatic Sea, between San Cataldo and San Foca, in the province of Lecce. It is administratively divided between the municipalities of Melendugno and Vernole and is frequented by tourists and inhabitants in the summer, who occupy the houses and the village, built in recent years.

On the coast stands a square-based tower with a truncated pyramid shape, Torre Specchia Ruggeri, which was built in 1568 to defend the territory against pirates and Saracen invaders who infested the area and threatened the hinterland from the sea. The tower marks the border point between the town of Vernole and the town of Melendugno. It is 9 km from San Cataldo and currently the state of conservation is very bad.

The coast of Torre Specchia Ruggeri, mostly low, is made up of rocky tongues, rich in Mediterranean vegetation, between which there are small sandy bays and inlets full of rocks. 

• Watchtower of San Foca. San Foca is a coastal town in Salento; it is part of the marina of Melendugno, of which it is a fraction, in the province of Lecce.

It is located between Torre Specchia Ruggeri and Roca Vecchia, on the Adriatic Sea. Its marina is one of the most important on the coast between Toast is Otranto.

The coast in the territory of the marina is rocky and is characterized by two sandy coves (north and south of the port). In the northern cove there are some rocks with dimensions from one to thirty meters. The most famous takes the name of Scoglio dell'otto due to its characteristic shape. It is a fishing village, inhabited mainly during the summer. The stretch of Adriatic sea that bathes the coast of San Foca has low and sometimes rocky bottoms. Patches of sand allow the development of a fairly large Posidonia prairie, whose leaves are massed by the sea along the banks in large brown banks. On the rocks at low depths Cystoseira reigns and large concentrations of Ulva and Enteromorpha, algae that like waters particularly loaded with nitrogen salts.

The tower of San Foca, also known as the Tower of San Fucà or of Capo di Sapone was built in 1568 by the master Antonio Saponaro of Lecce, with a sighting function against the frequent Turkish invasions. It has a square base and a truncated pyramidal body, with two superimposed compartments not divided by a string course. The external wall is of the so-called "shoe" type, that is with an inclined wall placed at the base of the fortification with a reinforcement function. As a lookout point it communicates to the north with Torre Specchia Ruggeri and to the south with Torre Roca Vecchia.

The tower has been restored and houses the offices of the Harbor Master's Office. 

• 40.2883618.42789711 Watchtower of Roca Vecchia. It is said that in the fourteenth century Count Gualtiero di Brienne decided to build a fortified citadel in this place, attracted by the happiness of its geographical position, and called it Roche, from which Roca, to which the Torre di Maradico also belonged, another name of the Torre Roca Vecchia, so called because of the marshes that still surround it today, making it an unhealthy area. Built in 1568 by master Tommaso Garrapa, when the medieval city was already in ruins, it has a square base and a truncated pyramid shape, typical of the period of the Spanish vice realm. It communicates to the north with Torre San Foca and to the south with Torre dell'Orso. At the moment it is in poor storage conditions. The only room in the tower lacks two walls and part of the roof, while the limestone material that constitutes it is heavily deteriorated. 

• 40.27450618.43013812 Watchtower of Torre dell'Orso. Also known as Torre di porto dell'orso or Torre dell'Urso or Creta Russa, it is much more plausible that the name derives from the assonance with the name of Sant'Orsola. The works began in 1568 by Giovanni Tommaso Garrapa, but its construction had to be interrupted due to his death, and then resumed in 1580 by his brother, Angelo Garrapa. The shape of the tower is truncated pyramidal with a square base, and is placed on a high spur of the coast, a few meters before the beach.  
• Watchtower of Sant'Andrea. In the coastal town of the same name between Torre dell'Orso and Otranto there are the remains of a sixteenth-century tower. Sant'Andrea is a seaside resort in Salento, marina of the municipalities of Melendugno and Otranto, in the province of Lecce. Sant'Andrea is dominated by a large and fresh pine forest that reaches the Alimini Lakes. Landing place of fishermen on the Adriatic Sea, 2 km from the most famous seaside resort of Torre dell'Orso, 15 km north from Otranto and 20 km from Lecce. Very well known are its stacks which attract large numbers of tourists and lovers of unspoiled landscapes.

It has been awarded several times with the Blue Flag of Europe for the clarity of the waters. 

Events and parties

• Feast of the patron saint San Niceta (At the Mother Church of Maria SS. Assunta). 15 and 16 September. 
• Feast of the Saints Medici (at the Chapel of the Addolorata). September 26. 
• Feast of the Madonna di Roca (in Roca vecchia). first Sunday of August. 
• Feast of Sant'Antonio, via Borgagne (at the newsstand dedicated to him). 
• Feast of St. Louis (in San Foca). 
• Feast of Sant'Antonio, patron saint of Borgagne (to Borgagne). 28 and 29 August. 
• Feast of the Madonna del Carmine (in Borgagne). 15 and 16 July. 
• Feast of San Foca (in San Foca). 18 and 19 August. 
• Feast of San Vito (in Roca Nuova). June 15. 
• Sagra te lu purpu. first ten days of August. 
• Festival of the Four Seasons (in Torre dell'Orso). in August. 
• Fruit and vegetable festival. from 6 to 8 August. in Borgagne 
• Fish festival (in San Foca). 8 and 9 August. 
• Borgo in celebration (in Borgagne). 30/5-2/6. 

What to do

• Seaside activities and beach life (In Torre dell'Orso and Torre Saracena). 
• The Gardens of the Sun, Bear Tower. Playground. 
• ^{[link not working]}Malepezza Riding Club, Provincial road Borgagne-Sant'Andrea, ☎ 39 338 7038701. Riding stable for horseback riding 
• 40.25436718.4449231 Torre Sant'Andrea beach, Contrada Torre Sant'Andrea. A spectacular beach with a rock arch. 

Shopping

In its territory an excellent olive oil is produced; Melendugno is part of theNational Association City of oil.

How to have fun

Night clubs

• Mamanera, San Foca, SP366. Reggae Lido with nightly dancehalls. 
• Babylon (in Sant'Andrea). Bar pizzeria on the beach of Sant'Andrea, concerts are very frequent in the summer. 

Where to eat

Moderate prices

• Aurora Coffee Shop H24, Piazza Risorgimento, 47. Bar open at all hours of the day and night, wide choice of croissants. 

Average prices

• 40.26886218.3360061 Il Capriccio pastry shop (Il Capriccio Coffee Shop), via Settembrini, 35 (Near the Santa Croce), ☎ 39 327 5652504, @[email protected]/. 0.90€. Mon-Sun 5.30 21.30. To taste the real Salento breakfast of excellent quality where you can find pasticciotti and croissants of various flavors, brioches, sheets and almond paste. 

Where stay

Safety

Pharmacies

• Bursomanno, Via Duca degli Abruzzi, 13 (locality: San Foca), ☎ 39 0832 881414. 
• With you, Via Colonnello Elia, 34 (locality: Borgagne), ☎ 39 0832 811095. 
• Stefanelli, Via Fratelli Longo, snc, ☎ 39 0832 834574. 

How to keep in touch

Post office

• 40.27057918.3382873 Italian post, via D'Ameli 33, ☎ 39 0832 835611, fax: 39 0832 835641. 

Around

• Roca Vecchia - The country was replaced by Roca Nuova, built in a safer place, because it was too exposed to Turkish incursions; over time, however, Roca Nuova became depopulated and is now a ghost town of sure interest.
• Borgagne
• Otranto
• Ostuni
• Lecce

Itineraries

• Coastal towers of Salento
• Adriatic Green Corridor is the cycle path that runs along the Adriatic coast. It has a length of 1300 km and connects Trieste with Santa Maria di Leuca, along the Italian Riviera with the richest beaches dedicated to seaside tourism.

Other projects

• Wikipedia contains an entry concerning Melendugno
• Commons contains images or other files on Melendugno

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