SALENTO
The very tip of the heel of Italy,where the coast turns to rock standingabove the sea and the two seas meet.Here the land runs out: the pilgrimscalled it De Finibus Terrae.
Gagliano del Capo is a town of white stone and narrow lanes, houses climbing over one another and dry-stone walls marking out the fields. Time runs slower here, and you can cross the old town on foot in ten minutes.
A few kilometres away, Santa Maria di Leuca: the sanctuary of the De Finibus Terrae, where the southern via Francigena ends. It is the point the pilgrims were walking towards when, in 1555, they took shelter in this house.
A SHORT WALKFROM THE SEAOF SALENTO
The beach at Marina di Leuca is about 6 km away, Felloniche about 7. Gagliano-Leuca station is 1.7 km from our front door.
The Ciolo, its clear water held between two walls of rock, is the first place we send people. Further north, the Grotta Zinzulusa (about 25 km); inland, the Bosco Guarini and the gardens of Palazzo Bitonti.
The Capo di Leuca changes with the seasons, and outsidethe weeks of August it is another thing entirely.
Old footpaths and hidden places along the coast
Travel out to find the hidden places, along old paths that show you what this land actually is.
In spring and early summer the coast is still quiet: that is the best time for the Ciolo, for the small coves, and for the tracks that run above the sea.
The food of a place that never needed much
In the trattorie of the village, two or three hundred metres from our door, people eat what they have always eaten. A pasticciotto in the morning; coffee over ice with almond milk when the heat really arrives.
And in the evening, once the town empties out, the second-floor terrace and a glass of local wine.
A journey this far south is an invitation to slow down, to listen to the silence, and to let yourself be taken in.