The deep Salento: Holiday in Agrihotel in Specchia 

Located in a strategic position overlooking the plain below, the old town of Specchia is considered among the most beautiful in the Salento.

The narrow streets closed to traffic and interrupted by flights of stairs enclose a household largely the result of a spontaneous which originated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that came almost intact until today.
 
Today, the old city of Specchia reveals a typical medieval plant grew in the fifteenth century. -- The period of reconstruction of the walls - around the nucleus formed by primitive castle. It is believed that the date of Specchia reconstruction after the devastating wars between Angevins and Aragonese, both the 1452 and that the merit goes to Ramon del Balzo. But because the main road is still called "rua", the Gallicism back to the domination Angevin, that is the fourteenth century. When there was already an organized nucleus.
 
Of the ancient walls that cingevano the country remain only a few fragments on the road that surrounds the west, while in eastern wall is a note of the oldest examples of Specchia emblem of reproducing an almond growing on a pile of stones. The walls instead latest date back to 150 years ago and have been recently renovated.

The central Risolo Castle is a fortified planting sixteenth, originally isolated and now combined with other buildings such as emerging high towers and two seats on the square corners of the square construction.

The eastern front of the People on the square is occupied by a curtain eighteenth at two levels, while the center opens the door boss dominated by the emblem and two statues. Owned by a prominent families, we have to Protonobilissimi, Marquis of Specchia in sec. XVI and XVII, interventions processing by building a castle marquis.

The most evocative of the village is behind the castle, where stairways and between short and narrow roads, including alleys and courtyards, there is the life of the people, almost always outdoors, leaving behind dreams socchiuse windows.
 
The church and the adjoining Franciscan convent Blacks have a certain date, 1531, when it played in the convent of the Franciscan Chapter Blacks, as reported in an inscription. The 1532 is the construction of the chapel of St. Catherine Martire, beautifully painted with scenes from the life of St. Catherine and his martyrdom. The crypt of rocks is supported by 36 columns on four lines and port on the walls traces of frescoes.

The parish church was built in 1605 but has undergone many remakes. The stone pillars are Lecce stuccati Venetian while triumphal arches are decorated with floral motifs.

Secentesca construction of churches are also dell'Assunta and S. Antonio, with an adjoining convent of the Dominicans.

More interesting is the church of St. Nicholas, built in the ninth century-X. And in 1587 restored and adapted to the Latin rite, as the plaque placed on the facade.

Rite greek was also the church of St. Eufemia, whose apse is willing to east, according to the Byzantine use, because this cardinal point the sun rises, a symbol of the divinity of Christ. The plant is rectangular while the apse, consisting of regular blocks of local stone, polygonal shape. On it opens a large mullioned window that illuminates the interior. The church, dating early end IX-X centuries. Is a brandello that of medieval life in this corner of Salento.
 
Things to see, finally, the oil hypogeum recently restored historic testimony to the importance of the production of Specchia.

The head of Leuca is full of these architectural structures, made between'500 and 800 and now abandoned, which represented the fundamental economic resource of the province of Otranto in the Land of the Kingdom of Naples.