Now it’s cold enough in London, and nostalgia has certainly kicked in. And I want to talk about that day we spent in Alessano, where we met Davide, Alberto and Gigi.
Davide slid into our DMs, when he saw we were organising free shoots in Salento, from July to August 2021, after a long time of isolation for the pandemic.
He said that he lives in Alessano, and so does the association he’s part of, LiberAzione. They aim at raising awareness about the land they live in, along with promoting artistic and cultural moments that happen nearby. Pretty much what House of Deda aims to do, but on a much more local level.
We met Davide and Alberto at about 6pm by the main square in Alessano, where the clocktower is. “This is the first thing I want to show you guys” he said on the phone.
We got there earlier, got a coffee, took some snaps of the main cathedral that sits opposite the clocktower. We’d never been in this characterful little town ~1hr drive southbound from Lecce. Teenagers are having a cold drink under a gazebo, others are heading into the church as the service is about to begin.
There’s always something thrilling about meeting with new people for the first time.
“The sun is about to set, we’d better get going if we want to catch some good light” I said. They opened this tiny, squeaky door and ventured into a narrow staircase with very tall stone steps. It’s dark here. Pitch black, no windows, no electricity.
Where are we? Is this safe? We just met them, can we trust them?
So we land on the only floor in the whole tower, a tiny room, where an intricate and perpetual mechanism made out of hundreds of nuts and bolts is looping before us.
“This is one of the four automatic clock towers in the region” says Alberto.
He starts to talk about Giuseppe Candido, mathematician and physician born in Lecce in 1837, who was also a priest.
We were looking at how the mechanisms work when the cogs suddenly let go of the repetitive moves to strike at 6.15pm, in a sequence of precise yet frantic shuffles. Yes, the time is measured in quarters, every 15 minutes the tower gives its people a quick nudge.
We then go up on the rooftop where, as well as the bells themselves, we get a 360° view of all the land near Alessano. Alberto mentions that the town was built and owned by two main families, Gonzaga and Del Balzo. Two wealthy families in the province of Lecce. Most of the architecture in Alessano was built by them in the 15th and 16th Century, when the Gonzaga family made these lands their home.
From up here, we look east, there’s Macurano. “Let’s get our cars and drive over there. There are the Byzantine caves of Macurano, I want to tell you all about them” says Alberto.
Once we parked, Gigi and Matteo joined us. They pulled over in a Bianchina, a proper one from the 50s.
We started hiking around these quirky settlements carved into the stone. It’s surreal. Some people from these lands dug a fully functioning village into the rocks here, with their channels to move water, engineered Trappeti to produce oil and wine, and areas to farm livestock. All of it, underground, layered onto these hills.
It goes back to the 8th Century, where the Byzantine empire fought away Basilian monks from East Europe regions, and they made port in Salento. Once they found shelter in Macurano, they made a living out of agriculture due to the favourable geological conditions of this area, mostly thanks to all the water flowing downhill to these caves. One can still see part of these water channels they’ve carved into the rocks.
We kept walking, and they told us that in the 16th century the whole area was transformed into a more developed Area Masserizia, where people would be able to farm with more modern techniques. Obviously, a small chapel was built.
“A week ago, we had a night-time hike on these hills. This is one of the experiences we have here with our organisation” says Alberto. “It’s an outstanding experience to walk this land, here we have hundreds of spices and herbs that we constantly use in our diets. They grow naturally here.” We tore bits of wild fennel, rosemary, wild oregano, liquorice, a number of berries, capers, wild rocket. These smells are so pungent and intense that it’s hard to classify these as the same ingredients we get in supermarkets.
“In Salento we don’t have the colosseum, but there are signs of archaeological history that are unique on earth.” Alberto says. He makes mention of Oronzo Costa, an environmental scientist (Alessano, 1787) who dedicated a large part of his career to study geology, botany, zoology of Salento, without having any recognition by the academia. But only when he moved to Napoli, he then got awarded for his scientific activities and he became a member of the Accademia Reale Delle Scienze.
Our hike ends when the sun is already set. We head back to our cars, Davide and Alberto suggest we end our day at Il Massarone. They manage this Masseria uphill, where they founded the Centre for Environmental Education. Here, they organise talks and events, they run workshops, activities and experiences. We're in awe in front of these guys' enthusiasm. Similarly to us, it’s very difficult to find people near here who are genuinely interested in these stories and recognise their authentic values, away from the marketed, click-bait content we normally get about remote and unspoiled places.
After a year and a half of pandemic, in isolation, we reminded ourselves that days like these, spent with whom just a few hours ago were strangers, are priceless.
It’s dark now, and we sat around a table with some beers at Il Massarone, where we let loose after a whole afternoon walking and chatting, and taking photos and notes. It’s feeling like we’ve known each other forever.
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