Gallipoli and Otranto

Our explorations in the vicinity of San Cataldo took us to Gallipoli, which we hadn't seen before, and Otranto, which we remembered fondly from spending a few days there during our trip to Puglia a quarter-century or so ago.

The old part of Gallipoli, the centro storico, is on an island jutting off the inside of Italy's heel into the Ionian Sea. A huge castle-cum-fortress guards the entry to the island.

This is what it looked like from the inside.

Once past the castle, you encounter a level of tourist schlock that made Orvieto look as virginally un-touristed as Montagano. Most of the visitors seemed to be Italian, but apparently they like to buy overpriced tote bags and kitschy souvenirs just like the rest of us.

There were some nifty churches, too. I was pleased to encounter Sant'Agata again, this time in an entire cathedral dedicated to her. 

Check out the detail. Her tormentor seems to be modeled on someone squeezing a lemon half over fried fish.

In the back streets, though, this is just another little Italian town. Something about this door to someone's kitchen evokes so many things I love about this country.

And even we tourists can't entirely ruin the prettiness of the town's waterfront situation.

The day we went to Otranto we eschewed the highway and took some back roads. They are still growing a lot of olives in this part of Italy, but many of the trees seem to be dying. 

Apparently an insect-spread bacteria is killing the trees, and the government isn't dealing with it very well. Millions of trees have already been cut down and burned. 

Otranto has a fortress, too. The one in Gallipoli had an exhibition of 18th-century paintings of Italy's ports. The one in Otranto had a show of Caravaggio...and his followers, we realized once we got inside and read the small print on the poster. There were all of two paintings by Caravaggio, one a dubious very early work. But some of the pictures by the Caravaggheschi were interesting, particularly the oddly contemporary portraits of apostles by Jusepe de Ribera.

The show was one indication that Otranto is now a big-league tourist destination, nothing like the funny little seaside town we'd enjoyed during our first visit long ago. The stalls selling souvenirs and the snack bars hawking hamburgers and pizza underlined the change. So did all the new hotels.

The cathedral is still there, though, and still has a sensational 12th-century mosaic floor depicting the Tree of Life.

I see my photographs seem to only show some of the gorier details. Below is Satan, on the right, gloating over one of the damned.

A day or two later Danny wrote a letter to our children about revisiting Lecce and Otranto: 

"We were last on the heel of Italy while you were at Real Adventure Camp, so around 25 years ago. We went to an old baroque town, Lecce after reading an article in The Atlantic, and had a very nice lunch at a restaurant mentioned in the article. It was a dusty little sparsely populated town. Otranto was on a beautiful bay, with two short streets of four-story hotels, a half dozen osterias and an old pre-Roman town to one side overlooking the bay. One evening we were walking in the old town and came upon an old lady sitting in the alley outside her house making orecchiette ["little ears" pasta].... The town was very quiet. And the tourists were mostly Germans.

"The roads we drove to get to these places were narrow and wound through olive groves. The highways had not been put in yet..

"Now both these places are filled with six-story apartment buildings, hundreds of hotels and restaurants and crowded with Italian tourists and souvenir stands selling refrigerator magnets and lots of other cheap ugly crap. 

"So I guess what I am saying is you can't go back. Enjoy now."

Very good advice. I'm not sorry we went back, though. I felt like I hadn't actually seen Lecce before. And although Otranto is no longer the place we remembered, I didn't mind suffering through a little bitter nostalgia in order to see that cathedral floor one more time.