The castle of Altojanni watches over no town at all: it stands in open country, a dozen kilometres from the built-up part of Grottole, and what it once defended has vanished. On the plateau there was a proper medieval city, with its own church and its own food stores, which emptied out and disappeared for reasons never established, probably as early as the 15th century. The name echoes in scholarship too: Altojanni is one of the two places in which the Lombard gastaldate of Latiniano has been located, though the identification is uncertain and Laviano competes for it.
What to see
Three things can still be read on the ground. The remains of a defensive structure, that is the tower the site is named after; the remains of a church; and a large number of pits dug into the soil, used to store food supplies. The pits tell the most concrete story: whoever kept food underground in those quantities was not manning a lookout post but feeding a whole town.
A short way off, at the top of the plateau, stands the sanctuary of Sant'Antonio Abate, built at the end of the 14th century at the wish of Queen Giovanna. It is the only building on the plateau still in use, and it explains why Altojanni was never entirely forgotten: the city ended, the pilgrimage did not.
Visiting
You can only get there by car: it is about twelve kilometres of country roads from the centre of Grottole, and the landmark to ask for in town is the sanctuary, not the castle, because that is the name everyone uses. The ruins are out in the open, in the middle of the fields, with no fence and no ticket office. As soon as you reach the plateau, look at the ground before you look at the stones: the pits and the walls barely surface, and you only notice them if you know they are there.
Our editors' tip
Go on 17 January, the feast day of Saint Anthony the Abbot, or on Whit Sunday and the two days that follow: those are the dates when the sanctuary is a place of pilgrimage and the plateau, for a few hours, stops being deserted. On any other day of the year you will probably have Altojanni to yourselves, which for a place like this is no drawback.