Published in The New Country January 9, 2011
The much-desired new year has arrived at last from this Sunday the excess holiday stress decreases gradually and over to lighten the workload supported by our psycho-physical state, we seek a way to get away from hectic everyday life slipping through the most attractive places of our territory. This first event of the year starts with one of the "most beautiful villages in Italy" or Mirror.
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| View of Piazza del Popolo in Specchia |
The town of Specchia is immersed in a thicket of trees enclosed in a boundless frame walls to dry on the slopes of those mountains called Serra and Serra Magnone Cianci, since Norman times and later in the feudal, the small village boasted a very strategic geographic position, thanks in part to their remoteness from the sea that the elevated hillside location .
entering the country note that the coat of arms, carved in soft limestone that serves as a keystone in the portal of the castle town located in Piazza del Popolo, an almond tree is growing on a pile of stones, but if we temporarily by "the defendant iconographic image" , we find that the tangled underbrush of speculation about the meaning of the name is really rough. Comments are nearly unanimous in considering that local historians, the "sight glasses or mirrors are conical mounds stony primitive outposts that served as a lookout or defense as tombs of ancient heroes who died in battle."
Other scholars debating the latter case, since during the removal of some of them (the mirror of Santa Teresa and Alpignano) has not found any match and still others date the construction of the mirror to the Bronze Age to the Neolithic and, during the Middle Ages, however, the village is identified in the Latin name of Specla de Amygdalis , Specchia Mendolina changed since then in the area there were many almond trees, and these are linked to the mythical figure of the Roman matron Lucretia Amendolara which, according tradition, built and expanded the nucleus of the old farmhouse, while the number of documents n eighteenth century, the mirror is identified as "Specla Presbiterorum.
The historian Antonio Penna tells the pleasant city center by: "the simple and compound Catalan or Baroque portals, frames of local stone, the inscriptions in Italian or Latin, the corbels of the balconies overhanging on the streets, the bulging wrought iron, the arches, which still adorn the facades of the once noble houses, friezes, statues, columns, shrines with sacred images worn away by time ", but at the same time, The village has both a sacred character, evidenced by the presence of many churches dedicated to Mary, the chapel dedicated St. Nicholas the patron saint of the country and the edification of those of moderate greek rite, which has a modern character and at the forefront of tourism, emphasized by the comfortable Hotel located between Broad-charming and enchanting courtyard houses of Old Town. In the heart of the circular perimeter of the old town, makes a fine show him the sixteenth century castle Protonobilissimo Risolo characterized by a massive rusticated portal instead located in a position opposite the Castle is the seventeenth-century Mother Church and alongside it, stands the "contemporary" bell tower built in 1945 to replace the century bell tower.
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| Church of St. Euphemia |
Before concluding this Sunday on a trip, walk about a mile further away from downtown and in the direction of the old farmhouse we admire a fat Another architectural treasure of Byzantine art in Salento. The Church of St. Euphemia, after two centuries of neglect, and enchanting after the necessary repairs completed in 1981. The sacred building, built according to the canons of the Byzantine tradition, is oriented to the east or in the direction of sunrise (Christological symbol), in honor of those observing Jewish traditions prayer with their faces towards the East.
After standing for the worship of sacred images, which was approved during the Roman Synod of Pope Gregory III and the subsequent victory of Charles the Bald of France against the Moors in the ancient Veretum (Patù ) is dated between 875 el'877 the probable construction of the church of St. Euphemia, contrary to numerous Byzantine crypts built underground to avoid persecution iconoclast, dominates the countryside unopposed.
Giuseppe Arnesano
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