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The biggest town near our place is Gallipoli, an ancient city that pokes out into the Ionian Sea like a fortified lollipop. We visit at least once a week for grocery and pharmacy visits, and so that John can get a decent internet connection for his podcast (Radio War Nerd) because we haven’t quite figured out how to counteract the weak internet reception in our village.
As a result of this proximity, I’ve spent a fair amount of time wandering around and wondering about this odd and appealing spot.
History
Gallipoli derives from ‘Kallipolis’, Greek for ‘beautiful town’. There are at least four places that are or were once named Kallipolis in the world, most of them founded by ancient Greeks back when they were colonizing bits of the Mediterranean and calling them Magna Graecia. The one I knew about from a very early age was in Turkey, (‘Gelibolu’), thanks to the bloody Dardanelles campaign of the Great War.
Our Apulian Gallipoli might have been founded by Greeks but it seems to have been little more than a trading post for them. The Romans were a different story: they subjugated Salento in the third century BC and Romanized the whole area during the period of the Social War (91-88 BC). In that time the city was a big supplier of the purple dye extracted from rock snails (a luxury item back then). It was during the Roman period, too, that Salento became a very big olive grove where slaves worked on vast productive estates known as latifundia. To this day (despite Xylella fastidiosa), it is still a major olive-growing region.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, like many coastal Italian cities, it was visited by Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Arabs, and Byzantines. Then it came under the rule of the Normans, then Swabians, the Angevins, and (after being sacked by Venice) the Aragonese. With the Bourbons the city experienced a period of relative peace and prosperity, and in the 18th century it became known for the production of lampante oil, that is olive oil used in a non-edible capacity.
During this period, the limestone island now known as the historic city was connected to the mainland by a long bridge.
The whole island is still walled and fortified. Even if several towers have been dismantled, it has the formidable appearance of a mighty stronghold. During the Napoleonic Wars the English navy blockaded Gallipoli and over two days fired 700 cannon shots at the city without managing to take it.
After the Risorgimento (Italian Unification), the town suffered as manufacturing shifted to the north and as electricity, oil and other kinds of vegetable oils supplanted lampante forever. The region remained comparatively depressed until the 1960s, when it became a popular tourist destination. It is still a major holiday spot and has an increasing reputation as a great summer spot for the LGBTQ community, partly thanks to the popular 2010 coming-out film Mine Vaganti (Loose Cannons).
Poetry
The sign on the way into town says “Città della Poesia” and I still haven’t figured out why. As far as I know no big poets are from here. Wandering around town I did find one sort of poetic graffiti, the lyrics of a song from Disney’s Aladdin, on the side of an abandoned newsagents kiosk:
The nights of the East
Among the spices and the bazaars
are hot you know, hotter than ever,
They can enchant you,
Eastern nights immersed in blue,
They know how to excite, seduce, and bewitch you,
As you like.
Good enough.
Otherwise, I like to imagine it’s the City of Poetry because the town itself is a kind of lyrical entity, with a stark kind of light that makes it beautiful even when it is shabby, the sea air, and a lingering sense of piracy.
The New Town
Downtown, the shopping strip, is essentially one street: Corso Roma, which leads down the center of a narrow strip like the vein of a shrimp. Here you find all the brand-name clothing stores, several pharmacies, multiple restaurants, a movie theater, lots of pizzerias and a lot of hotels. There are also at least two schools, an impressive church and a sprawling piazza with a view of a grand old train station.
Most days you can find a travelling fruit-and-veggie seller to get fresh farm stuff. Yesterday I got a kilo of tiny clementines and half a kilo of delicious lemons from the back of a truck.
The Bridge
Crossing over the bridge, it is hard to miss the massive castle at the end or the big strange sea-urchin sculpture. You can see kingfishers, gulls, terns and ducks hanging around the docked boats and tidied fishing nets. On sunny days you can even see schools of fish in the clear, shallow harbor.
Yesterday, a restaurant on a pier near the fishing port was being mobbed by gulls looking to scavenge on fishy refuse.
The Old Town
The island, the historic center, is now almost entirely devoted to tourism. Every other building in the center is a B&B and in the summer there are numerous restaurants and shops selling local specialties like tarallini (savory cookies), sponges, jewellery, and artisinal sandals. Most of these shops are closed in winter but it is still picturesque to wander through empty, narrow streets along to the surprisingly pristine beach.
The Baroque jewel of the town is the Gallipoli Cathedral, consecrated to Saint Agatha. It was built in 1696 and the exterior is incredibly ornate. I read that the altar is built from an old Roman stele and still bears the following mysterious inscription (in Greek):
I am a most precious gift . . . I was placed on the remarkable altar . . . , which belonged
to Marsilios, three times glittering and three times luminous. Acceding to the ardent
desire of Magi . . . os, patron and priest, lord bishop Pantoleon, holder of this throne,
sits with great piety.
A poster saying “Help! Offerings for the Cats” suggests that someone is paying attention to the pretty large feline population stalking the cobblestones. I noticed a lot of bowls of kibble and water put out for their delectation. These treats seem to have given them superpowers.
