Masserie near Maruggio

Houses behind walls

Round here a masseria was not a country house. It was a farm with walls: high, thick walls, a courtyard closed by a heavy wooden gate, often a tower with machicolations above the door and windows, from which stones were dropped on anyone trying to get in. The enemy came from the sea. In the sixteenth century pirates did not stop at the beach, and anyone working the land a few kilometres from the coast had to be able to shut themselves in. The towers by the sea gave the alarm; the masserie held out.

Inside was everything needed to live behind closed gates: stables along the outer wall, the oven, the cistern, storerooms for grain, and the capase, big earthenware jars for the wine. And often, underfoot, an olive mill cut into the rock.

La Maviglia

On the eastern edge of Corni di Fiasco stands La Maviglia, an eighteenth-century masseria among olive groves and Primitivo vineyards, which later passed to the Gigli family of Manduria. Its arch, at the far end of the pinewood, was the gateway to their garden; the stories told in the village about the Gigli, Viglia the cat and Toto the dog, are in our Stories.

One of the Gigli, Dionisio, also wanted a navigable canal from the Maviglia down to the sea, towards Borraco. It was never finished, but a stretch can still be seen on the coast road, where the dunes are cut through and a bridge joins them again.

From farms to what they are today

In the twentieth century the masserie emptied. With land reform the great estates were divided up, the farmers went to live in the villages or further away, and many stayed shut for decades, their doors walled up and prickly pears growing in the courtyards. Over the last few decades a few people have begun to reopen them, one at a time: stables have become dining rooms, storerooms bedrooms. Today you go to a masseria for dinner, to sleep, to spend a day resting. Below are the ones we know around Corni di Fiasco.