Montesardo

the hamlet of Montesardo near the village of Alessano is located at 184 m a.s.l. It's the third highest locality of the province of Lecce after Serre dei Cianci and Mount Sant'Eleuterio. The inhabited center develops on the southern continuation of the Greenhouse of Cianci, that here takes the name of Serra di Montesardo from which you get a complete view of Capo di Leuca. The news more ancient than a village has in the XVI century, when the etiquette, in de situ Japigiae, describes a "oppidum mediocris magnitudinis", which were still visible remains a large wall circuit and the ruins of the ancient dwellings situated on a hill called "Mons Arduus", about seven miles away from Capo di Leuca. He also recalls that, according to the popular tradition, that city was called by the Greeks Tracheion "OROS", a name which in Latin can be interpreted "Mons asper" or "arduus". In fact that the city was in "bitter monte et lapidoso sita".

The tract of wall still visible at the base of the castle Romasi, is made with blocks of local stone squared and put in place without the use of mortar, according to a technique used also in the near center of Vereto. Are kept to a maximum of four rows. It was probably built between IV and III century B.C. after the fall of the Roman Empire of the West was always used as a fortress, with its bastions and a solid circle of walls, separated by towers, in which opened four gates: Porta Earth, Porta Nova, Porta Castello and carries the closed. The towers and walls were torn down in 1867. The frequentation of the area in the byzantine age is testified by the rupestrian settlement of Macurano and a funerary epigraph, today in the Provincial Museum "S. Castromediano" of Lecce, datable to 1130. In the medieval era, with its fortified castle and the numerous towers along the walls, was presented as an impregnable fortress. It was the seat of important schools of mathematics, philosophy and music. During the second world war the country was occupied by the German troops.