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PRE-HISTORY IN PUGLIA
Puglia is located in the center of Mediterranean; it is
the southeastern most region of Italy and stretches
between the Adriatic and the Ionian Seas. It has always
been an ideal region for human settlement and a zone of
commercial and cultural exchange because of its
geographic position, its gentle landscape and
particularly pleasant climate.
Seat of populations which reached the highest levels of
civilaziont since earliest times, its prehistory is a
cornerstone for studies on the more recent paleolithic
Mediterranean and European civilizations.
Easily accessible by land or by sea, it was inhabited in
the historical period by the Illyrian populations of
Japigi, Dauni, Peuceti and Messapi, was the site of
numerous Greek colonies, was a Roman territory, an ally
of Hannibal against Rome, was included by Augustus in
the "Apulia et Calabria" region.
Puglia suffered barbarian invasions, passed under the
domination of Byzantium, obtained a certain indipendence
with the advent of the Longobards and subsequent
Frankish domination.
Exposed to Saracen raids, it was colonized in the 11th
century by Normans who made it a principality. It was
part of the Reign of Sicily, the Reign of Naples, and
the Reign of the Two Sicilies prior to Italian unity.
The contact with such different ethnic groups and
cultures has strewn the Puglia territory with
archaeological finds, castles, towers, cathedrals, urban
and rural buildings and other monuments built in a vast
range of styles.
Puglia is far from the main touristic flows offering to
the visitor pleasant climate, astonishing landscapes,
limpid sea, beautiful beaches and superb food.
MIDDLE AGES
Barium -- the old Latin name for Bari -- does not seem
to have been a place of great importance in early
antiquity; only bronze coins struck by it have been
found.
 In Roman times it was the point of junction
between the coast road and the Via Traiana; there was
also a branch road to Tarentum from Barium. Its harbour,
mentioned as early as 181 BC, was probably the principal
one of the district in ancient times, as at present, and
was the centre of a fishery.
Bari's greatest importance dates from the time when it
became, in 852, a seat of the Saracen power being Swadan
the first emir, and in 885, the residence of the
Byzantine governor. In 1071 it was captured by Robert
Guiscard. In 1095 Peter the Hermit preached the first
crusade there. In 1156 it was razed to the ground, and
has several times suffered destruction.
RENAISSANCE
The city of Lecce and the Salento region have a heritage
of history, geography, art and natural beauty in
Mediterranean Italy with its lights and colours, its sea
and its inland areas new and cheerful, its hospitable
and discrete people, its cuisine, light and varied and
its natural products.
Lecce is famous for its Baroque style, built in a
fine-grained golden limestone.
Already by the year 800 B.C. it was the capital of the
kingdom of the Messapi (Messapia, the land between two
“waters”, extended from Santa Maria di Leuca to Ostuni)
an ancient population with origins from Crete belonging
to the same period as the Etruscans, became an important
Roman colony in 120 A.D., as can be seen from the ruins
of Hadrian’s amphitheatre, perfectly preserved, and from
the Roman Theatre. The city basked in the glory and
changing fortunes of the Roman Empire until its fall,
when it was incorporated, along with the whole of the
south of Italy, into the Eastern Roman Empire, whose
capital was Byzantium, to which Lecce owes its cultural
growth thanks to the philosophical, artistic and
religious influence of this ancient Greek culture.
It is in this period that Byzantine art flourishes, as
seen in the stone churches, in the frescoes and in
philosophic studies. Otranto, Gallipoli, Lecce in the
Salento, Ostuni, Bari, Trani in northern Puglia, built
the most beautiful cathedrals in the so-called “Romanico
Pugliese” (Romanesque of Puglia), an architectural style
that arose from the providential union of classic
European Romanesque with the Mediterranean imagination
of the Byzantine.
 It is a happy period (from an artistic, cultural and
even economic point of view) for Puglia under the rule
of the Normans; it was the favourite land of Frederick
II (called by his contemporaries “Stupor Mundi”) who, even though he had established his
Capital in Palermo, Sicily, spent most of his life in
Puglia, giving this land the symbol of his eclectic
personality, modern and open to all cultures: Castel del
Monte. At the court of Frederick II the painters,
philosophers, sculptors and men of letters who were able
to unite the Arab, Byzantine, Norman cultures developed
their styles and when the Normans fell in 1250 A.C., to
escape from the Anjou rulers, left Puglia with all their
cultural “baggage” and went to Lazio and Tuscany,
planting the seeds that would in the following centuries
give life to the dazzling experience of the Tuscan and
European Renaissance.
After the dark centuries of the Angevin domination and
the Turkish raids with the destruction of Otranto, there
followed the domination of the Aragons and the Lecce
Renaissance.
.jpg) The Baroque experience, thanks to a large
number of Master Stonecutters, took on an original
characteristic and transformed the city into a showcase
of rare beauty, reaching us in modern times practically
unchanged.
Just as interesting and fascinating from a historical
and artistic perspective are two important centres of
the Salento region, located on the coasts: Otranto, on
the Adriatic coast and Gallipoli, on the Ionic coast.
The two cities are very different in character and
history:
Otranto lived and developed in the shadow of the
Byzantine and looks eastward; the first universal study
centre was founded there, welcoming students from all
over the then-known world; a monk from the Casole Abbey,
in 1100, created a mosaic floor for the Romanesque
cathedral representing the whole of the erudition of the
time: east and west, sacred and profane, monotheism and
polytheism. Once the principal town of the Salento,
today it preserve the mystery and charm of its past and
of its history, brought to an end at the hand of the
Turks in 1480. Gallipoli, a lively sea town, founded by
the Greek colonists of Taranto, was at the height of its
economic splendour under the Aragons, when it produced
in its underground frantoi 70% of the lamp oil used to
illuminate the cities of Europe and established, by
decree of the crown of Spain, the market price of oil.
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