At 9 this morning, a coach came to take us to visit Otranto. It's about 45 kilometres from Lecce, and we drove through miles and miles of olive groves.
The name of Otranto might still be known in Britain for 'The Castle of Otranto', by Horace Walpole, often described as the first true Gothic novel. However, his novel is about a medieval kingdom of his imagination, and the creepy castle he describes bears little resemblance to the rather stolid fortress in the real Otranto.
Like much of the region, Otranto has a colourful and mixed past. It was important as a Greek and then Roman port, called Hydruntum. Later it was ruled by the Byzantines, the Normans and then the Aragonese. In 1480 the town was invaded by Turks, and 800 locals were executed for refusing to convert to Islam. The bones and skulls of the martyrs of Otranto are now stacked behind glass in one of the chapels in the cathedral in a very creepy manner that would have satisfied Walpole's Gothic imagination.
We were dropped beside the very pretty harbour
and we made our way up some steps and into the town through one of the recreated gates. The outer fortifications had been allowed to deteriorate after the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and a church was built where the gate had been. The church deteriorated in its turn and was demolished in 1960 and the port gate was re-instated.
From the gate, a very steep little main street runs up to the piazza outside the cathedral.
This is a view over the space outside the gate and the steep little Main Street which I took from the town walls later, but it gives quite a good view of the place, which is really tiny.
The town's most important attraction is the twelfth-century mosaic in the Romanesque cathedral, which was built in 1088.
The facade was partly destroyed when the town was taken back from the Turks in 1481, but was immediately rebuilt in the same style. The rose window is in the Renaissance style though, and the portico, which was added later still, is in the Baroque style.
The famous mosaic, dating to the 12th century is charmingly quaint and on a huge scale, so it fills the whole church.
It is in the Byzantine style, having been carried out by a Byzantine monk called Pantaleone. The church is felt to be a symbol of how the two different strands of Christianity, the Latin Christians and the Byzantine Christians, co-existed peacefully in this place until the 16th century. Pictures within the mosaic include religous stories like Noah's ark, but also depictions of historical, mythical and even pagan figures, including Alexander the Great and King Arthur. Our guide explained all the symbolism to us at great length, otherwise it would have been completely lost on us as it included references to stories common at the time which have now been lost to us. I'd never heard, for instance, about Alexander the Great wanting to travel up to heaven, and putting meat on top of two spears to attract griffons to carry him up there, but the story is in the mosaic!
The real-life 'castle of Otranto', properly called the Castello Aragonese, is a solid construction which forms part of the tough defences of Otranto. The current building is fifteenth-century, though it was built on an earlier one.
The moat was always dry, apparently; you get more injuries, when attacking the walls, if you fall onto the ground than if you fall into the water.
We walked onto the town walls, from which we had fine views of the town and the harbour. Then there was just time for a quick lunch before we were back in the bus and off to the olive mill.
We had a very fascinating talk on olive oil. I had no idea that there were over 60 million olive trees in Italy! We learned how extra virgin olive oil is made and had the process explained to us. The essential fact to know is that no chemicals or additives are used to extract the oil, it is all mechanical, and these days takes about an hour. The mill we visited stores about a quarter of a million litres of olive oil in huge silos
Apparently we have been storing our own olive oil all wrongly. It should be kept out of the sunlight, which is bad for it, and not next to the cooker, as its temperature should be no higher than 24 degrees and no lower than 18 degrees. So we need to go home and move it into a cupboard!
After the talk, which was very interesting, we tasted various different oils. Of course I bought some. Do you need to ask?
After that, the coach took us back to Lecce. We had been very lucky with the weather, we had avoided all the rain, which we saw in the distance. But we had hot sunny weather, and will hope for something similar tomorrow.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment