Otranto and Lecce

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

We began the day with a drive to Otranto, the easternmost point in Italy, and way down the heel, where the Adriatic Sea meets the Ionian Sea, just 25 miles or so from the Albanian coast:

  

The old city of Otranto is another UNESCO World Heritage Site, featuring the Otranto castle, Castello Aragonese, which is truly massive.  It was a wonderful protection against attacks from the water:

In the shop windows were “pupa liccese” dolls which were explained to us as figures used by local custom for engagements:

  

After touring the castle we went to the Mosaico Otranto Cathedral, consecrated in 1088, which is famous for the enormous mosaic floor, perhaps the largest in the world, made between 1163 and 1165 by local artisans supervised by a local priest.  The main theme is a tree of life:

From Wikipedia (in translation from Italian), “The iconography of the mosaic is spread through scenes from Old Testament, from the cycles of chivalry, and the bestiary medieval, from the novel by Alessandro. The images are arranged along the development of the tree of life, trace the human experience from original sin to salvation.”  Well, things here range from easy to understand to pretty unusual.  Here are Abraham Isaac and Jacob:

Here’s a creature with a human head, a four-legged animal’s body, two rear legs, a human foreleg, and a human arm:

Here’s a sort of lion head with four bodies:

There is a beautiful early 18^th c. organ:

And there’s a terrible story.  In 1480 the Turks were in control and required conversion to Islam for all the residents.  800 of the local populace refused and were beheaded.  Their remains are sealed in the Chapel of the Martyrs, and the bones are on view:

The 800 were beatified by the Pope, which is interesting, as there was a significant Jewish population here, and it’s not for sure that all the 800 who were beheaded were Christians.  Thus it’s quite possible that there are some beatified Jews’ bones in these cases.

We left Otranto and drove to the coast, where we had another large lunch, this time at the Masseria Panareo, following which the three men along with our guide Ido hiked up to an abandoned lookout at the edge of the sea on a bluff.  This was part of a string of watchtowers along the coast erected by the Spanish in the 15^th c.:

  

We drove back to Lecce in time for a guided tour run by the local tourist office.  We thought we had signed up for a tour of the Lecce synagogue, but it no longer exists, or, rather, is now a nightclub/restaurant and just about all traces of the synagogue are gone.  We sat in the basement of the structure while the guide told us about it.  Then, we embarked on a tour of Lecce which we did not realize we had signed up for.  We walked the town and admired the Roman amphitheater which had been discovered during some construction:

  

We ended at a remarkable private museum.  The story is amazing, but not out of the ordinary here!  A local man wanted to open a restaurant, but he had some problems with the drainpipe to his toilet.  As he dug to find the leak, he came upon an absolute treasure, multiple rooms and layers of history dating all the way back to the Messapii in the 8^th c. BCE.  His story is documented in an article in the NYTimes from this past spring:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/world/europe/centuries-of-italian-history-are-unearthed-in-quest-to-fix-toilet.html

The really fine artifacts were taken by the government, but there’s lots still here.  In one case is a broken menorah of unknown age:

Tomorrow, Gallipoli—the Italian one, not the Turkish one.  A Gallipoli I never knew existed!