Monograph City of Caprarica di Lecce

• Caprarica di Lecce
• The Historical centre and the courtyard houses
• The Baronial palace and the civic tower
• The medieval stables
• The underground olive mill
• The ancient farmhouses
• The countryside of century-old olive trees
• The Serra of Capràrica
• The Archeodrome Kalos

CAPRARICA DI LECCE

Capràrica di Lecce is an Italian town of about 2.450 inhabitants in the province of Lecce. It is located in the central-eastern Salento, 12 km from Lecce, 16 km from the Adriatic Sea and 32 km from the Ionic cost. Ancient and archaic land, with a prosperous agriculture, breeding and milk production. Land full of goats as indicated in the toponym of the name “capra-ricca” that is “goat-rich”. An ancient legend says that once a hurricane spared the citizens of Capràrica di Lecce.

On the morning of November 23rd 1884, a peasant woman from Capràrica, who has noted the arrival of the hurricane, warned all citizens so that they could run for their life but she was not taken seriously. At the arrival of the hurricane people were unprepared. Those had the possibility, took refuge into emergency accommodations and, at the end of the cataclysm, the survivors went out to count the damages. They found a deplorable spectacle: uprooted roofs and trees and houses reduced to rubble. All seemed lost but miraculously all the inhabitants were pulled alive from the rubble, except a citizen not particularly devout. From that time, the miracle was attributed to the prodigious intervention of Sant’Oronzo, remembered as Sant’Oronzo de lu Raganu.