The village of Tricase, land of the five castles and della Quercia Vallonea, was born from three farmhouses present on the territory. Today Tricase comprises four villages enclosed in only one, five castles, two fractions, two marinas and a port. Inside the village, in some points is a strong concentration of Roman evidences, in other medieval instead, in still other renaissance and baroque styles. Tricase is a melting pot of civilisations and stratification of the past. By the numerous barons in Angevin age passed in the jurisdiction of the Balzo Orsini, up to overcome the Renaissance and arrive in 1588 in the hands of the family gallon, capable of elevating Tricase seat of the Principality in 1651. Officially until the feudal eversion of 1806, and unofficially until the disappearance of the last princess gallon, the powerful family ruled the city reflecting on it all its peculiarities.
Caprarica of Cape, depressed, Lucugnano, Sant'Eufemia, Tricase and Tutino: six villages, six historical centers, six different stories. Imagining a path concentric, whose heart is the central piazza G. Pisanelli, find place in the panorama tricasino numerous testimonies of the art of the past. The castle of the Princes Gallon, with its tower Orsiniana of 1400, the two wings of the 1588 and 1657 and the bulwark lanceolato of 1532; the immense church matrix dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary designed by Adriano Preite from Cupertino, completed by tricasini in 1784 after 48 long years of work and enriched by rich commissioning of the nobles. Inside valuable blades signed by Veronese, by Jacopo Palma il Giovane, Giovanni Antonio Fasolo, Paolo Finoglio and Giandomenico Catalan. Also worth a visit is the scenographic conventual church of the Dominicans dedicated to San Domenico da Guzman, completed in 1688 after the multiple looting of the Turks. Without doubt is the most baroque churches of the city, altars finely worked and enriched by spirals, putti, flowers, statues and paintings all located under a wonderful wooden ceiling. Departing from the center means to go to the discovery of other pearls, such as the delightful church of San Michele Arcangelo said also of Secondogeniti, erected in 1624 by Cesare, youngest House Gallon. The Renaissance and Mannerist and Baroque blend in this church, considered one of the seven stars of architecture of Salento. In the heart of the old village, among the palaces of rich families tricasine, you will also find the Church of Santa Maria of the Temple, which brings us back to the period of the Crusades and the Knights Templar. Outside the historic nucleus, a time in the open countryside but today incorporated in the more modern part of Tricase, rises the former convent of the Capuchin Friars, with the appearance of a fortress with its machicolation preserves a small church fregiata with a precious wooden altar and a monumental pictorial blade of Tintoretto Jr.
Continuing the whirling path that takes us away from the center we find Caprarica of Cape, characterised by a wide renaissance square on the sides of which law is the stratification of time and styles: the Castle of the Counts of the Balzo (1524), palazzo Sparascio (XVII-XVIII century) and the parish church of Sant'Andrea del 1795. To follow, the Greek village of Sant'Eufemia. Its Greek art gleams through numerous courts, peculiarities of the center, from the 18th century parish church dedicated to Santa Greca that gives the name to the district and multiple basilian settlements on which stands the byzantine crypt of Santa Maria del Gonfalone (IX) with legendary counts of the columns. Tutino instead, with its Roman traces, is a candidate to be the rione oldest in the city and makes the overwhelmingly presenting the image of the Castello dei Baroni Trane, with walls and moat of irrefutable Angevin period (XIV). The campaign divides the agglomerate of Tricase and fractions of depressed and Lucugnano, that same year in which cannot pass unnoticed the secular oak Vallonea, grandiose specimen of a vegetation is still alive in the territory tricasino, source into the past of livelihood, declared international monument. In this green ring fit pajare, dry stone walls, votive shrines, chapels and monuments not to forget how the infamous Church dei Diavoli (Santa Maria di Costantinopoli), which with its octagonal shape gave and gives rise to many legends and rumors. The fraction of depressed, built on the ancient road that from Otranto led to the town of Vereto (Patù), still shows signs of the passages medieval and Roman. The menhir called Cross of Principano takes its name from one of the many hamlets disappeared of the past, while the Castello dei Baroni Winspeare proposes a structure remodeled several times around a fourteenth-century. Lucugnano, instead, is famous for its picturesque Pope Galeazzo, for the hermetic poet Girolamo Comi and for production figula. Chapels and artisan enrich the town that had developed around the renaissance structure of the Castello dei Baroni Alfarano-Capece.
The path concentric closes on the eight kilometers of coastline on which lie the locality of Marina Serra, delicate resort and Tricase Porto, with the numerous villas eclectic immersed in the green. We remember the old Casino in Via Duca degli Abruzzi 3, house of 1700 with facade in the Moorish style. On the same there is a pane in pistrelle. On the facade are beginning to emerge ornamental designs Arabian-style that a time were whitewashed, in fact the facade was originally composed of more colors such as blue, yellow, red. During the first world war it was loaned to British military that into the surrounding soil built there a tennis court. Subsequently (60 years) was enlarged with the addition of two apartments on the roof of the house. Together with Villa Bianca, the house in front of once represented a kind of masseria, rich in animal husbandry and with an internal oil mill for the production of oil. Villa Daniele Via Nazario Sauro, built as a summer residence in 1860, for wanting of the Marquis Giuliani, related with families Aymone Panese and of Tricase. During the second world war the villa was requisitioned for four long years by Jews, Turks and other refugees of various nationalities and subsequently restored was the summer residence of the Prince Gallon of Tricase. Villa Rocco Pasanisi, always in Via Duca Degli Abruzzi, designed by the ing. Rocco Pasanisi and completed by the same in 1873 the building up to 1943 had the function of a summer residence. On the two columns that delimit the entrance gate appears the name of its first owner Rocco Pasanisi, partesottostante in the main body of the villa is located a chapel with a star vault completed in 1873. Villa Pizzolante Lezzi Via Duca Degli Abruzzi, built at the beginning of 1700 and enlarged after 1945, in lateral parts presents to the input two epigraphs, one in English and the other in Italian and Latin, on marble plates in a rectangular shape from which emerges the character of Mr Antonio Lezzi who tried the "single beatitude" and the blessed "solitude".
Tricase is part of the district of footwear of Casarano that represents the second pole pugliese of footwear, together with that North Barese Ofantino, and is one of the regions with the greatest footwear vocation of the entire national territory. An appreciable contribution is given, moreover, from fisheries and the tourism sector with the port of Tricase. Activities characterizing the local economy is the art of Crete, mainly linked to the fraction of Lucugnano, favored by the presence in the territory of sediments of clay of different color particularly suitable for art figula.
