Michele and his wonderful approach to tour organisation, as well as obvious love for Apulia made me. I've used services of Apulia Slow travel already several times in the past. Here we find two of the most important historical places of all of Puglia, the roman city of Brindisi and the greek city of Taranto, the “capital” of Magna Graecia, with the most important archaeological national museum of Puglia.

This territory is very rich of history as well. Another attraction of Salento area is the town of Galatina where you can taste the famous local delicacy “pasticciotto” or get to know the local rural culture. The very heart of Apulian Baroque is the very elegant city of Lecce with its baroque palaces and churches constructed from warmly colored Lecce stone. The inland of this area is famous for its majestic baroque style Churches and palazzi which were built during the 17th-18th century. Here we have miles of coastline characterized by a wide variety of landscapes and architectonical elements such as wonderful white sandy beaches, cliffs, natural areas, watchtowers and castles facing the sea but also picturesque towns and harbors such as Gallipoli, Otranto and Santa Maria di Leuca.

It is amazing to historians and geographers that Magna Graecia, once a center of immense wealth and culture geographically, was concentrated in what today many consider to be the poorest and most backward areas of Italy.Salento is the Southern part of Puglia and is a unique land embraced between the Ionian and Adriatic sea. The chief city colonies of Magna Graecia (and their home city) were Tarentum (colonized by Spartans) Heraclea (by people from Tarentum) Metapontum (settled by Achaeans) Sybaris (Achaean immigrants) and then known as Thurii (settled by Athenians who replaced earlier colonists from Sybaris) Paestum, or Posidonia (settled by people from Sybaris) Laos (also settled by people from Sybaris) Siris (migrants from Colophon) Caulonia (people from Crotona) Epizephyrian Locris (settlers from Locris) Hipponium (migrants from Epizephyrian Locris) Cumae (people from Chalcis) Rhegium (now Reggio de Calabria, settled by people from Chalcis) Neapolis (now Naples, earliest people came from Cumae) and Elea (migrants came from Phocaea in Ionia). And it was through contacts and trade with Magna Graecia that the Etruscans and the Romans first came into early contact with Greek civilization, especially its pottery and the practice of minting coins.

Culturally, Magna Graecia also was the center of two philosophical groups in the 6th century B.C.E., Parmenides, who was at Elea, and Pythagoras (originally from Samos), who resided at Croton. Unlike Greek Sicily, Magna Graecia on the Italian peninsula began to decline by 500 B.C.E., probably because of malaria and endless warfare among the colonies, but certainly with the onslaught and emergence of the Roman Empire. This process dispersed Greek culture and arts throughout the central and western Mediterranean. In the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries B.C.E., Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula (today the poorest areas in ITALY) were colonized by Greeks, and it is claimed that the area boasted more Greeks and Greek temples than homeland Greece itself. Because these colonies remained closely linked to their home cities in Greece proper, they together were known as Magna Graecia.ĭespite the existence of earlier trading colonies established by the Phoenicians, Greek mythology and folklore eventually asserted the greatest influence on Sicily.

These new colonies were concentrated south from the Bay of Naples to the Gulf of Taranto and along the southern and eastern coasts of Sicily in the MEDITERRANEAN SEA. Competing city-states such as Sparta, Corinth, and Athens began to found new cities (colonies) that, in turn, became centers of an economically thriving and internally competitive expansion of Greek culture. It was a process that began in the 7th century B.C.E., largely because of overpopulation. MAGNA GRAECIA (or “Greater GREECE”) was the geographic expression of Greek colonization originating from many different Greek cities.

Magna graecia salernum