オストゥーニの洞窟・トップ7

A stroll along the seafront in the center of the Villanova marina

In 1278 the walls of Villanova were built, and about 20 years later the castle was built by the Angevins, who took over the domination of Ostuni from the Swabian-Normans, who were responsible for the intensification of olive cultivation. From surviving documents, demonstrating its strategic importance, it appears that around the 15th century the castle was a fully active defensive structure. In fact, the city of Ostuni under Aragonese domination, thanks also to the castle and the small port of Villanova, managed to maintain the status of a state city, therefore free from feudal duties. Due to the various destructions over time, little remains of the original 14th-century construction. Currently the castle is made up of three bodies that act as square towers with a sloped base. Around the building, at the height of the first floor, runs a tubular torus and from the roof of the building rises a turret modeled on the prototype of a lighthouse. Ref. https://fondoambiente.it/luoghi/castello-del-porto-turistico-di-villanova-ostuni

it is a tourist port protected by two piers: the eastern pier 70 m long with quayside and bollards and the western pier 280 m long. Inside the dock there are some docks reserved for pleasure boats

Pretty town in the upper Salento of very ancient times (the Messapi were the people who preceded the Romanization). Characteristic for its narrow alleys that climb up to the center and for the white color of the lime walls. It is also worth a stop to visit the Castle, the medieval village and the churches (especially that of S. Anna). Not to be missed, scattered around Ceglie and in Salento, are also the "specchie", large mounds of limestone slabs which in the Neolithic age perhaps served as defense or watchtowers

Nice ride even on rocks and beaches

Ceglie Messapica is one of the oldest municipalities in the region, located in the heart of the Itria Valley. To see: Montevicoli cave; cave of San Michele; Ducal Castle; Collegiate mother church of Santa Maria Assunta; Church of San Rocco.

the main square of Ceglie

The Castle of Carovigno rises in an eccentric position, on the highest point of the town and, for this reason, strategically more suitable for defense. It has a triangular plan, with a square tower on the eastern vertex, a circular one on the western vertex and a "almond-shaped" one on the northern vertex. From the top of the towers it dominates the entire coastal strip that extends from Torre Canne to Brindisi. The first nucleus of the Castle, probably of Norman origin, is to be identified in the square tower with a strong counter-scarp adjacent to Porta Ostuni. On the south side, close to this tower, the "palatium" described in the Inventory of Maria d'Enghien of 1440 must have developed. The buildings after this date insist on the north area, incorporating both the square Norman tower both the circular one, perhaps Aragonese. The almond-shaped tower on the north-east corner was built between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by the Loffreda, feuders of Carovigno in this period, as evidenced by the presence of the marriage weapon of Pirro Loffreda, walled up in the same tower. It seems that the builders of the almond-shaped tower of Carovigno were influenced by the Sienese architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini, whose presence in Puglia is attested in 1492 to supervise the construction of the strongholds of Taranto, Otranto, Gallipoli and Brindisi.