The slow-paced villages that make up Salento boast a stunning landscape, deep-blue seas, a fragrant blend of history and culture, a seriously tempting food and wine discovery, a poetical timeless atmosphere.
Here, amid the cream of stone, the green of olive, the blue of sea, we invite you to immerse in the ancient grace of Salento, dazzling display of nature’s way with Mediterranean maquis colors, life’s simple pleasures and zen flow.
The area is more precisely described as many gems, not one: small hamlets spread over hundreds of miles, from the Baroque city of Lecce, to southernmost Caribbean-like sea Santa Maria di Leuca and Castro Marina, Salento is vast and irresistible.
What makes Salento unique is the living presence of this history: Greek dialect is still spoken in some southern villages of the “Grecia Salentina”. You are not a stranger here in Salento. Never.
Salento is like a balcony that faces two seas: the Ionian and the Adriatic coasts open to innumerable cultural influences. Summer lunch is often a frisella, a local dish made entirely with wheat, tomatoes, olive oil. Back-to-nature living: it’s all very chic right now, but the Salentini people have been living this way for centuries.
Here, in Salento, you’lI find some things like nowhere else: a rural simplicity, an unconditional warmth, true open-mindedness, generosity and kindness. They depict southern Italy as baroque, as over the top. But it can also be quite simple, minimal.
Salento is the poetical interpretation of minimalism and multiculturalism: the honey color of its stone, the desert-like landscape, the olive groves, the turquoise sea, it could be Morocco or Greece. Quit, timeless, sophisticated, inspiring. Here you can dance with the spiders, over the music played by the spiritual healing rituals of impoverished peasants and laborers. In a word, seductive.
Sip a “caffè in ghiaccio con latte di mandorla”, eat a warm pasticciotto in the early morning, indulge in a tasty frisa surrounded by the fascinating sound of the wind. You are in the land of the wind, the sun, the sea, where “piazze di paese”, mostly unknown villages and secluded beaches abound.
There are gorgeous places to visit like Lecce, Gallipoli, Otranto, Santa Maria di Leuca, Tricase, Galatina, Galatina, Nardò, Squinzano, Presicce, Melpignano, Martano, Specchia, authentic gems that are well worth visiting and sometimes getting there just before sunset will make you experience Salento’s wonderful light with features that you will find nowhere else.
Love you Salento.