Monograph City of Cursi

• PREFAZIONE pag.5
• Introduzione pag.8
• Centro Storico pag.11
• Palazzo De Donno pag.14
• Palazzo Feudale Maramonte pag.17
• Convento e santuario pag.19
• Monumenti megalitici pag.24
• Parchi pag.27
• Français pag.29
• English pag.43
• Deutsch pag.56
• Español pag.69
• BIBLIOGRAFIA pag.83

CURSI

Cursi is located in the heart of the central-eastern Salento and its territory is part of the Union of the Otranto Interior Municipalities, an institution created in 2001. Once it was part of the Greek-speaking area of the Grecia Salentina, and its Italian-Greek inheritance still lives on in the history of its magnificent tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

According to an ancient tradition, the name Cursi comes from the presence of a roman station for couriers, who provided military news to the different districts and delivered the famous “diarii cursores” over long distances. The town centre of Cursi is surrounded by green countryside and ancient olive trees, the cornerstone of the agricultural economy of local oil production. The ancient origins of the territory are made obvious by the presence of important megalithic monuments and of architecture of the byzantine era, historical testimony of the Italian-Greek culture.

The landscape assumes singular nuances in the area characterised by stone quarries, the so-called “tagliate”. The green and endless expanses of olive trees combine with the landscape typical of the Stone Age, by creating beautiful scenery for pleasant and evocative nature walks. Even nowadays, the local economy is characterised by the extraction of the “Pietra di Cursi”, one of the most prized Leccese limestone employed in decorative applications and in the building industry. The limestone, visible both in the countryside and in the historic centre, is the dominant feature of the entire landscape thanks to its vividness and the presence of very ancient fossils.