Salento: the South wind
	Latin people used the expression “dulcis in fundo” to say that the best comes at the end. This ancient saying comes pure and immediate when, travelling from north to south long the Adriatic cost in Italy, you arrive to Salento, Booth heel. Recently, the Salento has been object of discovering from tourists so that its summers were full and animated above all on the coasts; but for each beach taken by storm from its tourists, you find other hundreds corners, views and narrow streets to discover and taste.
	Even if its boundaries are not officially limited, Salento has well specific characteristics that distinguish it from the rest of the Puglia and make it a unique earth. Its close relationship with the sea, the contamination of the near Balcanic earths, the historical living and the visceral traditions make of the Salento Peninsula one of the most particular zones in Italy. Our journey starts from Lecce.
	Since the Greek time, Lecce has been crossroad of different people and dominations, each of them gifted something making it a sumptuous town of art. But its characteristic is above all baroque and for this reason it is also called “South Florence”. During the Spanish domination , in fact, Lecce became an open sky yard of religious and urban sumptuous works. To say the truth it was said that, put in line one after another, the palaces and the churches in Lecce would have built the wonderful street in the world. Wizard of the Lecce baroque was the architect and sculptor Giuseppe Zimbalo, also called the Gipsy.
	The artist, lived between the 1600 and 1700, signed with his intelligence the wonderful monuments in Lecce, between them the Cathedral, already started in 1144, the Saint Oronzo’s column, erected ex vote to the Saint for the end of a pestilence, the Celestini’s Palaace, nowadays Province’s location, and the splendid Saint Croce’s Basilica, triumph of magnificence and creation. In no architectonic style as the baroque, religion links itself so happily with the joy of leaving, and in the Lecce’s churches this is even more evident. But before that the city was made by baroque, other people erected majestic monuments.
	Other Lecce’s symbol, in facts, is the Roman Amphitheatre from the probably Augustan age. The building appeared for chance during the excavations for the building’s works of the Bank of Italy in 1901. Later, in 1929, the excavations revealed another treasure: the Roman Theatre, contemporary of the Amphitheatre. The Park’s Tower, monumental complex edified by the Orsini’s in 1419 comes, instead, from the Medieval period. A curiosity: in the trench were reared the bears, heraldic symbol of the race lived the Tower.
	The visit to these architectonic jewellery is an inebriating experience so as it is a simple promenade in the ancient part of the city; get lost in the Lecce’s streets means tread the scenes with papier-maché theatre, were the actors are saints, flowers, animals and symbols. Pride of the small town is the Annunziata’s Cathedral , started in 1080 and made holy after eight years.
Otranto Pride of the small town is the Annunziata’s Cathedral , started in 1080 and made holy after eight years. Farther to be a splendid synthesis of Byzantine, Romanic and Paleo-Christian synthesis, the Cathedral is the biggest in Puglia and preserves inside one of the most elaborate, extended and controversial mosaics of the ecclesiastic history.
You deal, in fact, with a magister work reproducing the life in a monastery; this makes still once it object of numerous interpretations. But the real suggestion in Otranto is its ancient centre that is presented at the visitors’ view as it was centuries ago. More over you have numerous small shops that are open till the late night during the summer and give to the village a lively noisiness.
	Burrata The Burrata is a fresh cheese. You obtain it adding to the fresh milk the whey, that you produce letting part of the production of the day before, and the veal rennet get bitter. At the moment of eating it, the Burrata has a slight surface, white bright colour, sweet and buttered taste.
NickName :Redazione
Creato il :3/1/2010