Melpignano - Melpignano

Melpignano is a city of Puglia.

To know

It is part of the Authentic Villages of Italy and of the Virtuous Municipalities Association for the eco-sustainable management of the territory. Melpignano hosts every year, in August, the final concert of the Notte della Taranta, the largest music festival dedicated to the recovery and enhancement of the Salento pizzica.

Geographical notes

Located in Salento, 26.3 km south of the provincial capital, it belongs to the historic region of Grecìa Salentina, a linguistic island of nine municipalities where griko is spoken, an ancient language of Greek origin.

Background

The presence of menhirs and dolmens identifies the origin of the first settlements in the area in the Bronze Age. The actual birth of the center remains uncertain: the various hypotheses would make it go back to the Greeks of Peloponnese came with Enotrio Arcade or which would have been founded by Melpinius, a centurion who obtained these lands by lot after the Roman occupation of the then Calabria (the current Salento) in 267 BC. A mythological hypothesis links the foundation of the town to the muse Melpomene.

Certainly colonized by the Romans, it fell for over five centuries under the Greek-Byzantine domination which radically influenced its uses, customs and local language. Greek culture persists and can still be found today in traditions and folklore. With the advent of the Normans, Tancredi d'Altavilla assigned the fiefdom to Giambattista Lettere in 1190. In 1396 it passed to Raimondo Orsini del Balzo and in the second half of the 15th century, through King Ferrante d'Aragona, it was ceded to the Aiello Tarantini. Over the centuries, various feudal families succeeded each other: the Mosco [8], the Ramirez, the Branai (Granai) Castriota (1632-1667), [9] descendants of Vrana Konti, the Acquaviva d'Aragona. In 1757 it became the property of the Marquis De Luca who were the last feudal lords.

With the subversion of feudalism in 1806, Melpignano was aggregated to Castrignano de 'Greci which together constituted a single municipality until 1 January 1837, when the two municipalities became autonomous.

How to orient yourself

How to get

On the train

• 40.14793118.2771671 Melpignano station (out of the city to the south-east). On the Lecce-Otranto line, it is managed by the Ferrovie del Sud Est (FSE).  

How to get around

What see

• 40.15726718.2931831 Mother Church of San Giorgio, Piazza San Giorgio. The current church is the result of a substantial renovation and expansion, carried out between 1785 and 1794, of the ancient parish church dating back to the early decades of the sixteenth century. The facade retains the original sixteenth-century portal with the high relief depicting St. George killing the dragon. The portal was dismantled and reassembled on the new façade and due to its typological setting and decorative scheme it is believed to be the work of Gabriele Riccardi, as it is similar to that of the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Lecce. The interior, with three naves and a Latin cross, houses valuable baroque altars dedicated to the Crucifix, to Saint Anne, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to Saint Anthony of Padua, to Our Lady of Sorrows, in the minor aisles, to Saint George, to the Madonna del Rosario and the Immaculate Conception, in the arms of the transept. The presbytery, belonging to the original structure, is enriched with decorations referable to the early Baroque and sixteenth-century frescoes depicting St. Leonard, St. George, a Madonna and Child and angelic figures playing the lute. 

• 40.1571518.29292 Piazza San Giorgio. It is surrounded by a series of round-arched Renaissance arcades, the Mother Church, the Chapel of the Madonna Assunta and the Clock Tower (1901). The arcades are a rare example in Puglia of architecture built for commercial purposes. Construction work began at the end of the 16th century to host the large weekly market which was held on Saturdays. Here merchants from Lecce, Bari is Naples, along with numerous shops. Made of local stone, they were rebuilt at the end of the seventeenth century at the behest of Bishop Maiorano, as the epigraph surmounted by the civic coat of arms recalls. In the nineteenth century with the shift of the market to Shirts the arcades lost their original importance. 

• 40.1571118.29333 Church of the Assumption of the Virgin, Piazza San Giorgio (next to the Mother Church). Built around the early sixteenth century under the title of Saints Rocco and Sebastiano, it preserves the original architectural structure characterized by the elegant ribbed star vault. The current façade delimits a forepart, built in 1678, which partially conceals the original façade from which the windows in Lecce stone come from; the portal is attributable to the sculptor Placido Buffelli from Alessandria. The interior, with a single room, has a mosaic floor, a large altar attributable to Buffelli himself and several paintings from the second half of the 18th century depicting the Marian mysteries. 

• 40.15455818.287734 Convent of the Augustinians. With the adjoining church of the Carmine, it was built starting from 1573 and restored in 1638 by the Coriglianese Francesco Manuli based on a project by the Lecce architect Giuseppe Zimbalo. Completed in 1662, the church has a facade characterized by an elaborate Baroque portal formed by two pairs of columns that support the entablature surmounted by a stone statue of the Madonna del Carmelo. The upper order is embellished with a window with an arched tympanum and lateral volutes with busts of cherubs. The interior, with a single nave plan with six chapels arranged along the side walls, still retains the sixteenth-century choir behind the main altar. In the side chapels altars are carved in which the figure of the lion recurs as an emblem of strength. The convent, compromised by the long period of abandonment after its suppression, preserves the remains of the cloister of 1644 and a well on which the two-headed eagle is sculpted, a sign of the presence of the Branai (Granai) Castriota family.  
• Chapel of St. Anthony of Cairo (Chapel of Sant'Antonio Abate) (just outside the walls of the ancient village). The structure, of modest size, has a very simple façade on the portal of which a Latin inscription is engraved bearing the date 1530. The interior, with a single room, houses the remains of a small altar and murals that originally covered all the walls . It is currently closed for worship. 

• Chapel of Santa Maria Maddalena. It was built in 1661 on the place occupied by a previous church dedicated to the same saint, in memory of the protection granted to the town during the terrible plague epidemic of 1656 so that St. Mary Magdalene was venerated as the second protector together with St. George. The Latin inscriptions engraved on the door lintels refer to this protection. The interior has a single room with a corner vaulted roof. 
• Chapel of San Michele Arcangelo. It is a private chapel built in 1741 by the priest Don Nicolò Francesco Veris, cantor of the parish chapter, who lived in the adjacent building. The only existing altar in it is the result of local carvers and frames the statue of the Archangel Michael attributable to the Coriglianese Oronzo Carrone. Two images depicting Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint George are painted on the walls. 
• Chapel of San Pietro d'Alcantara. It is a privately owned chapel built in 1693 and annexed to the building complex that was the residence of the wealthy Maggio family. It was built by Pietro Maggio. Inside there is a single altar with a painting of San Pietro d'Alcantara and statues of San Giuseppe da Copertino, San Francesco da Paola and San Vincenzo Ferreri. 
• Marchesale Castriota Palace. It was finished building in 1636 at the behest of Giorgio Branai (Granai) Castriota, son of Giovanni Fabio and Eleonora Macedonio. The construction of the building was commissioned to the architect Francesco Manuli who in the realization worked sober architectural solutions and elegant and inconspicuous decorations, closer to a Renaissance taste. It clearly shows its origin as a defensive system, to which the lookout towers and the defense walls with the patrol walkways that enclose the large rear garden belong. The façade ends with a cornice with small shelves that houses an epigraph with the name of the client. It is marked by a portal decorated with two columns that support the central balcony while the windows, decorated alternately by triangular and arched tympanums, are progressively arranged at shorter and shorter intervals near the central balcony. In the internal area there is a garden where there are a series of windows and loggias in Lecce stone, a fountain in the center of the avenues designed in a checkerboard pattern, a pergola and stone benches. In the past, the building housed a rich art gallery, now moved to Molfetta, which included, among others, paintings by Veronese, Domenichino, Tintoretto, Giaquinto, as well as the most renowned Salento painters of the time. 
• Underground oil mill. It is entirely excavated in the rocky bank and constitutes a precious historical testimony of the local culture and economy. Built in the seventeenth century, it still retains the large tanks for the milling of olives, the stone millstones and the presses for pressing. The hypogeal nature of this structure is linked to the resolution of particular technical problems: the solidification of the oil around the fiscoli did not occur thanks to the ever higher temperatures than on the surface; furthermore, the pressing of the olives was facilitated by the pressure of the rocky vaults on the presses. 

Megalithic monuments

• 40.16149618.2928075 Menhir Minonna, via IV Novembre. The menhir (35 x 50 cm), cataloged by Cosimo De Giorgi, is 280 cm high and is square. 
• 40.15850318.295976 Menhir Candlemas. The monolith is incorporated into the boundary wall of an industrial plant for the extraction and processing of Lecce stone. The top is pointed in a pyramidal shape. The menhir (50 x 32 cm) is 310 cm high, bulging and strongly tapered at the top. 
• 40.15778218.2885967 Menhir Lama, Piazzetta Asilo, 8. The menhir (25 x 38 cm) has a square parallelepiped shape 420 cm high. 
• Menhir Scinéo. The menhir (30 x 20 cm) was put back in a vertical position and relocated on a two-level base. 190 cm high, it is tapered on the surface (from the base 30 cm to 24 cm) and has a very corroded terminal section. It turns out to be irregular and incomplete of the upper part. 
• Menhir Chipuro. The menhir (30 x 29 cm) is of recent discovery. It is a monolithic block in Lecce stone 184 cm high with a parallelepiped shape tapered at the top. 
• Menhir Masseria Piccinna. 

Events and parties

• Feast of Our Lady of Constantinople. March 14. 
• Feast of St. George. April 23. 
• Watermelon Festival. July 21. 
• Final concert of the Notte della Taranta. second half of August. There Taranta night is a festival of popular Salento music, dedicated to the recovery and enhancement of the Salento pizzica, which takes place in various municipalities in the province of Lecce and in Grecìa Salentina and ends with the great final concert in Melpignano. The event takes place in the square in front of the former Augustinian convent. The event is attended by musicians of various national and international fame. 

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Other projects

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

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