Come and find out Carnival in Salento! We can suggest many offers to enjoy Salento; many ways to discover the Salentine folklore during Carnival period. You could not resist to the overwhelming joyfulness of the Carnival in Salento, where the sounds of pizzica, the carnival folk traditions and the magic of Salento will make you fall in love! And for sweethearts, there are a lot of offers to celebrate romantically your St Valentine’s Day, giving you moments of real romanticism and relax in wonderful luxury dwellings, elegant masserie and B&B. What are you waiting for booking? Salento is just waiting you!

Planning a journey in this period of the year means to leave and discover winter landscapes and backgrounds completely different from summer ones. It means to know traditions, flavours and knowledge connected to an old culture; it means to enjoy the feast and joyfulness of the Salentine carnival with parades of floats and masks linked to old legends and traditions. It means as well to discover the glow of a land and its people in occasion of celebrations for patron saints; to taste winter cooking dishes; to enjoy winter landscapes of desert beaches and countryside; to find out the old slow rhythm of small villages.

It is the ideal moment to treat oneself to downtime dipped into the warm, cosy and genuine atmosphere of masseria and old fashion houses pampering yourself and making you pamper by the genuine hospitality of Salento people who can give you the better side of a wonderful and authentic land.

Salento is not just sea, wonderful beaches and sun. It is not a place to be just lived in summer. Salento peninsula is an exclusive land holding inside, like a case, an infinity of hidden treasures connected to the deep historical roots, a past made up with genuine and simple things as well, lived in Salentine countryside at the shadow of silver foliage of hundred-year-old olive trees. Taste, traditions, fantasy, tales and legends, widespread in folk culture, are the soul of this land.

It is just in popular imagination that it is possible to try to find and know people’s roots. Sirens, princesses, warriors, goblins, spirits and characters from popular tradition represent a real safe, a poem where the history and roots of a strong and proud people resurface. A people by old traditions that has been able to recover and make them strongly live again, aware of the richness to be saved.

A travelfor discovering Salento is to look around with new eyes capturing the whole magic that only an exclusive place like Salento can release.

Seashores of the cape of Leuca are completely golden by expanses of lemons and oranges. Tobacco shows its big leaves and diffuses its aroma, aloe makes a good showing of its bunch of feathers and, elegantly and languidly rocked by the sea breeze, eternal model of sculpture and painting, some palms let their exotic foliage swing some times in the sky. [...]

Terra d’Otranto had several names in the past, or, it is better to say, several peoples imposed their own name: the region of Salentine people, or the land of Messapi (the ancient inhabitants – N.d.R.). [...] The general nature of the peninsula of Otranto is grace and pleasantness. Huge olive groves cover the plains; a large number of farmhouses animate the landscapes, and the slender and a bit Moorish architecture of the simple bell towers gives an original look. [...]

Life is easy. Cities and villages are refined and clean and, like the bell towers, the architecture of the modest houses is gentle and graceful. They do not have the roof but terraces with flowers; an indoor courtyard leads to the rooms. These courtyards, square and paved by stone slabs, are shaded by a pergola where women gather to spin during the day. People enjoy the cool of the evening on the terraces.

Although olive tree is the king of the country, it does not reign always alone. Some times, mainly in the southern coast, the rich and black carob blocks the pale and regular olive tree contending the sovereignty. Holm-oaks are not uncommon here and pine tree is familiar; it opens here and there its fan, that is always in movement, while palms overlook coasts with their leafage characterizing the extreme beaches by an oriental touch.

The salentine peninsula is not only sea, sun and wind but it is a land can offer unique moments even in this period of the year. It is the ideal season to savour the traditional products typical of the autumnal months: wine, olive oil, chestnuts are the main protagonists of folk festivals which gladden weekends of salentine people, especially during the weekend celebrating the All Saints’ Day.
Tasting of traditional cooking, nice wine, olive oil, pork specialties together with dancing, music, rhythms and sounds purely from this land: these are the right ingredients to find out the folk face of Salento small villages.

It is important to remember as well concerts, performances, walking around the historical centres to discover the ancient side of this land, cycle trips among paths hidden by age-old olive trees, trekking to find out fascinating places giving breathtaking and striking views far away from the frenetic rhythm of cities.
Many are suggestions that Salento can offer giving you exclusive moments, souvenirs and odours of a genuine land devoted to hospitality.

When they come for the first time to Salento peninsula – often motivated by anything but literary interests – many English travellers did not imagine they would bind on this land as deeply as to make them feel a part of it but also of its history.

A valid example was Martin Shaw Briggs who, born in Otley in the Yorkshire, is one of the most famous English travellers-writers in Salento. In his work, In the heel of Italy; a study of an unknown city published in 1910, he wrote: “City has a noble history and a really significance currently in Italy, even though it owns invaluable vestiges of a far-off past dating back to dark age of the primitive history”.

The title of his book, In the heel of Italy; a study of an unknown city, the city is unknown because English people did not still know it in that period.
It was in April 1907 that Briggs, who was in Salento for the first time to study monuments and palaces of the city for the Architectural Review, was so deeply struck by architectural beauties he decided to come back again two years later as a traveller.
He met some important characters of Salento, such as the duke Sigismondo Castromediano, Antonio Galateo, and he decided to tell both history of Lecce and the Martyrs of Otranto and, in a very soft style, history of some of the small villages he visited along the way from Lecce, the city built with the golden stone of Terra d’Otranto, to Santa Maria di Leuca.
Briggs is one of these travellers-writers who tells about Salento as if he had known everything of this land for ever.
Come and visit this land, the traveller. […] Everywhere he goes, he will find out courtesy of this people and realize he will have many debts of kindness. When he has to go away, either he leaves when dawn dissipates the fog among palm trees and gardens or sunset illuminates the bright cupola of the Dome with its rays, he will feel an eternal attachment for the beautiful Lecce.

September is the ideal month to enjoy a relaxing holiday for the “out season” travelers who will visit Salento. After the typical crowd of August, the month of September will give sunny but not so hot days, beaches not so packed and, why not, fun that still reminds the summer is going to end.

Many folk festivals will gladden September nights, from the characteristic and awaited Festa te lu mieru (the festival of wine), the festival of puccia (a typical bread), and many other religious events which are a way to find out the popular culture of Salento, sounds and rhythm of pizzica (the traditional dance), flavours of the traditional cooking.

September is also the ideal period to go for long walks around the old villages, the historical centres of the main towns, such as Lecce, Gallipoli or Otranto, to appreciate colours and fascination of monuments and palaces built with the white typical stone.

Salento and its people will conquer giving you unforgettable and unique moments.

You will get pleasure from the sunniest days in the year with a perfect temperature: warm but not hot; the beaches, not so crowded, will be already equipped with everything to offer a comfortable relief from the sun.

You will enjoy very large beaches protected by sand dunes hiding luxuriant pine-woods and trees typical of Mediterranean countries; the white and thin sand reflecting the light of the sun.

In the month of June you can experience a week holiday in Salento in several ways: both along the beach and in the hinterland where you will know the traditional religious celebrations, the illuminations and the incredible attractions enlivening those days.

A holiday in the south of Apulia in June is an occasion not to miss.

You could find affordable accommodations at private houses with swimming pool, bed & breakfast, farmhouses and trulli (traditional stone houses); you can also enrich your stay renting a boat, attending a sailing class or simply discovering the old town of Lecce by bicycle.

From Torre dell’Orso to Porto Cesareo more than 200 kilometres of coast will astonish you: thin sand and cliffs sheer over the sea.

You will discover Otranto, Castro, Santa Maria di Leuca as far as Gallipoli. A tour where, kilometre after kilometre, you will forget daily stress and urban chaos, a slow tour between the sea and the good wine tasted at the shadow of a pergola in a square or in a romantic restaurant on the sea with glittering of water and fishing boats coming back after fishing.

The nature of the area has given beautiful landscapes to this land: long expanses of white sand and crystal clear waters both on the Adriatic coast, such as the wonderful beach of Torre dell’Orso, and on the Ionian one, Porto Cesareo with 17 kilometres of beach and the beautiful island “Isola dei Conigli”.

High cliffs and small inlets follow from one coast to the other one with breathtaking views. The sighting towers, the so-called sea guardians, are along the 200 kilometres of the whole coast highlighting a past time where there were a lot of invasions from the sea. Following this virtual tour of the Salento coast, it is important to remember the interesting historical-archaeological sites such as Roca site, on the Adriatic Sea, where the last excavations have brought to light a necropolis with funeral equipments dating back to the 17^th century B.C., or the cave “Grotta di San Cristoforo” full of protohistoric testimonies.

Discovered by a group of speleologists, the cave “Grotta dei Cervi” in Porto Badisco is one of the most important archeological sites in Salento and Europe. It dates back to 4000 years ago and there are inside inscriptions of the Neolithic Age with symbolic and even magic images. The Naturalistic Park of Porto Selvaggio, on the Ionian coast, is another beautiful place rich of history. You can find there the cave “Grotta dei Cavalli” which overlooks the marvelous Uluzzo Bay and there are inside prehistoric testimonies.

The sea but also the history characterizes this wonderful peninsula making unforgettable every moment lived in this land. Then, considering the imminent national holiday on the 2^nd of June, the Republic day, we look forward to welcoming you in Salento for a magic holiday discovering history.

The roofs are composed of horizontal concentric rings of stones that surmount one another vertically, each time becoming smaller than the below one. The last one, is closed using a big stone that it is locally called “chianca”.

This buildings have a very ancient origin. They probably date back to the megalithic age. Some examples can also be found in Egypt (3000 b.C approximately).

At the beginning they used as a shelter by the farmers, first only during the harvest period and then also in the rest of the year. They were often built by the farmers themselves who used the stones they found while reclaimining the land. Nowadays they have become characteristic and comfortable houses where tourists can find an accomodation for their holiday in the Salento area.

The stones of the “trulli” change colour according to the light of the day: at dawn they look red. When the sun is high and hot, they seem to be larger, as if they were trying to better receive light and heat. At sunset they look pink. During the night their shape can easily be recognized. They can be considered a sort of sentinel, the witness of the history of the Salento area.