Corigliano d'Otranto

Corigliano d'Otranto sits on the Salento plateau twenty-five kilometers south of Lecce, one of the nine towns of the Grecìa Salentina where the neo-Greek dialect Griko is still spoken alongside Italian. The Castello de' Monti is the town's centerpiece: a medieval fort acquired in 1465 by the de' Monti family of French origin, given a defensive perimeter and deep moat under Giovan Battista de' Monti around 1515, and then rebuilt in Lecce stone in the early sixteenth century with circular towers around a quadrangular plan, one of the first castles in the south to combine the two geometries. The Parrocchia di San Nicola Vescovo was raised on the foundations of an earlier chapel in the second half of the same century. The municipal territory carries one of the densest concentrations of megalithic remains in Salento: dolmens, specchie and menhirs that record habitation across the Bronze Age, including the Caroppo dolmens unearthed in 1993 just outside the town.