Campi Salentina

Campi Salentina sits on the Salento plain at forty-seven meters, fifteen kilometers north of Lecce. Menhirs around the territory point to Bronze Age occupation, but the town as such dates to 926, when Saracen raids destroyed the nearby villages of Afra, Bagnara, Firmignano, Ainoli and Terenzano and pushed survivors together at the current site. The Normans came in the eleventh century; Tancred of Altavilla donated Campi to the Bishop of Lecce, and the castle followed in the centuries after.

In 1522 the Paladini family bought the fief, and after Maria Paladini married Giovanni Enriquez, the town was elevated to a marquisate in 1627. The town earned the title of città by presidential decree in 1998. The coat of arms is a sheaf of wheat: locals call Campi the granary of the Terra d'Otranto, and the surrounding plain is olive groves and vines.

The menhirs, the ninth-century founding, and the seventeenth-century marquisate mark three separate layers on the same plain: a scattering of prehistoric stones, a town built from the wreck of five destroyed villages, and a feudal seat raised in status centuries later without ever moving from that original site. What holds the layers together is the plain itself, flat ground given over to wheat and now to vines, which explains why a granary emblem and a castle used only as a summer residence could belong to the same small place.

From Bari / Brindisi (BRI), about 2h 10m by car.

Lamezia / Reggio (SUF) is about 5 hours away.

By car from the centre of Lecce 22 minutes, Bari 2 hours or Salerno 4h 35m.

There is a railway station in the comune, so you can arrive without a car.

Coming from Bari?

Coming by train into Taranto? Campi Salentina is about 1h 21m away by road.