Presicce: what to see, the underground olive mills and 2027 guide [GUIDE]

What to do and what to see

You can walk round the centre of Presicce in half a day, but it is worth giving it more time: beneath the squares are the underground olive mills, above ground palazzi, churches and courtyards, and just outside the town the countryside of the Serra di Pozzomauro, with little rural churches and fortified masserie (farmsteads). Here are the experiences not to miss.

1. The underground olive mills beneath piazza del Popolo (1 hour)

Beneath piazza del Popolo lies «a town beneath the town»: the underground olive mills, or «trappeti», cut into the rock to process olives. There are 23 in the territory of Presicce, eight of them in the old town. The oldest were dug on the slopes of the Serra di Pozzomauro; then, after the Arnea marsh was drained, the work moved down into the valley, into the town. From October to March the «trappetari», the mill workers, stayed shut away in these underground rooms, with the mule that turned the millstone and the presses for squeezing the olive paste; the oil of Presicce was then shipped to Naples and Spain. Abandoned at the end of the nineteenth century, some of them turned into cellars or stables, the mills have been restored since the 1990s. As well as those of piazza del Popolo, you can visit those of vico Sant’Anna and via Gramsci, usually on a guided tour: ask the Pro Loco di Presicce, the local tourist association, for days, times and the meeting point.

2. The Palazzo Ducale and the hanging gardens (1 hour)

The Palazzo Ducale looks out over piazza del Popolo; it grew up around the keep of the Norman castle. In 1630 Princess Maria Cito Moles turned it into a noble residence and had the chapel of the Santissima Annunziata built there, with its carved façade facing the square, as well as a hanging garden on the earthwork of the old walls: it is laid out on several levels linked by ramps and flights of steps, with ornamental plants and a shell-shaped fountain in the middle. At the end of the eighteenth century, under the de’ Liguoro, the double-flight grand staircase was built in the courtyard; the battlements you see today date from the early twentieth century. The palazzo belongs to the municipality and since 1990 has housed the Museo della Civiltà Contadina (museum of rural life), with about 300 tools and objects of farmers, olive millers, blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers and weavers, arranged in themed rooms: in the room devoted to time there is the old clock from the bell tower of the Chiesa Madre, dated 1879. Check the opening times before you go; the hanging gardens can mainly be visited during Presicce in Mostra.

3. The Chiesa Madre di Sant’Andrea and the column (45 minutes)

On piazzetta Villani, a stone’s throw from piazza del Popolo, stands the Chiesa Madre, dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle, the patron saint. It was built between 1776 and 1781 on the site of the old parish church damaged by the earthquake of 1743, from which it keeps the sixteenth-century Renaissance bell tower. The pale, elegant Baroque façade has a richly decorated doorway; the interior, a Latin cross with a single nave, has eight side altars adorned with stucco, the high altar in polychrome marble of the Neapolitan school and the holy-water stoups donated by Francis I of the Two Sicilies. Above the wooden choir hangs the 1601 canvas of St Andrew, signed by Giovan Battista Catalano, which was already in the earlier church. Next door, the little chiesa dei Morti (church of the Dead), named after its underground tombs, bears the date 1575 on its architrave. In front of the façade rises the column of Sant’Andrea, commissioned by the Bartilotti princes at the beginning of the eighteenth century: on top is the statue of the saint, and around the base a balustrade with four female figures, the cardinal virtues.

4. Via Marchese Arditi, the palazzi and the courtyard houses (1-2 hours)

From piazzetta Villani runs via Marchese Arditi, considered the most beautiful street in the old town. Along it stand Palazzo Colella Bisanti, with a large garden and a dovecote tower carved with the dates 1563 and 1770, the eighteenth-century Palazzo Villani, faced with rustication and as big as a whole block, the sixteenth-century Casa Cesi, Casa Rollo, Palazzo Arditi, where the Marquis Michele Arditi was born, and Palazzo Seracca, with its inner courtyard announced by a play of arches. Near piazza del Popolo, the Cappella Arditi, from 1767, which combines Lecce stone with rococo decoration, is also worth a stop. Between one palazzo and the next hide the courtyard houses, «li vecchi curti», where the farmers lived: small houses of one or two rooms around a courtyard with the well and the «pila», the stone washtub. The finest are in the Corciuli and Padreterno districts, in via E. Arditi, vico Sant’Anna, via Anita Garibaldi and vico Matteotti, where one courtyard bears the date 1581. Many palazzi are private: you admire them from the outside, and some gardens open during Presicce in Mostra.

5. The church of the Carmine and the Casa Turrita (45 minutes)

In via Roma is the church of the Madonna del Carmine, from the second half of the sixteenth century, with the Carmelite convent built between 1585 and 1590, which now houses municipal offices and the library. Inside the single-nave church, the high altar in Lecce stone is extremely fine work, with twisted columns, openwork, bas-reliefs and statues; the choir and the pulpit are wooden. The bell tower, brought down by lightning in 1945, was rebuilt in 1951. In via Gramsci, among the houses of the well-to-do families of the past, is the Casa Turrita, or Torre di San Vincenzo: a sixteenth-century tower house that was part of the village’s defences, with machicolations, arrow slits and diamond-point rustication on its lower part. Since 2012 it has belonged to the municipality, which has restored it. Along the same street there are also Palazzo Lia, with its doorway, and Palazzo Valentini, with two sixteenth-century family coats of arms.

6. Santa Maria degli Angeli and the sunset walk (1 hour)

From the column of Sant’Andrea take via Madonna degli Angeli and walk for just over a kilometre to the convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in the countryside: it is the most beautiful walk to take at sunset. The church stands where the medieval settlement of Pozzomauro once was, destroyed by the Saracens in the fifteenth century. It was rebuilt from 1598, according to tradition after two miraculous events, and in 1603 the Reformed friars settled here and built the convent around a cloister with a well in the middle. Inside, a single nave on a T-shaped plan, there are eight altars, vaults decorated with eighteenth-century stucco and, in the transept, the oldest frescoes in the church, Byzantine in style, dating from between the twelfth and the fourteenth century. After the suppression of 1866 the complex was abandoned for a long time: check with the Pro Loco whether the church is open.

7. The Serra di Pozzomauro, the Madonna di Loreto and the masserie (half a day)

Above the town rises the Serra di Pozzomauro, a hill of terraces, dry-stone walls, Mediterranean scrub, pines and centuries-old olive trees. On top of it stands the little rural church of the Madonna di Loreto, which the people of Presicce call «Madonna te lu Ritu»: it is Basilian in origin, has a gabled façade and, inside, a fresco of the Madonna and Child among angels. Behind the chapel opens the Byzantine crypt of San Mauro, later turned into an underground olive mill, with frescoes from the twelfth to fourteenth century, including an Annunciation. In the surrounding countryside there are the Specchia di Pozzomauro, an ancient mound of stones, the Pagliarone di San Mauro, a cone-shaped farmers’ shelter more than 9 metres high, built entirely of stone, and, further away, the fortified sixteenth-century masserie, such as La Casarana, Del Feudo and the Tunna, with its round tower from 1553. Some masserie are private, others have become places to stay: you admire them from the outside. For roads and paths, ask the Pro Loco for directions.