Bagnolo del Salento stands on the plateau north-east of Maglie, and its name says that water used to stand here: it comes from balneolum, a diminutive of the Latin balneum, and the underground water table bears it out. Local tradition would have the village born around Roman baths, but the sources call that groundless; another explanation invokes the Byzantine Greek balaneion, a basin, after the old tanks in which concrete was once made. Until 1862 the comune was called simply Bagnolo. On its coat of arms there is a mermaid playing a lyre.
In 1429 Maria d'Enghien sold the fief to the hospital of Santa Caterina in Galatina, founded by her husband and run by the Franciscans: from that day and for nearly four centuries the fortunes of Bagnolo were tied to a hospital, until feudal rights were abolished. The church of Santa Maria dei Martiri, of the late fifteenth century, bears that name in memory of the massacre of Otranto of 1480, and served as the village burial ground until the municipal cemetery was ready in the later nineteenth century. What put Bagnolo into the national statistics, though, dates from 1946: at the referendum between monarchy and republic it was the most monarchist comune in Italy, with 841 votes for the king and five for the republic.
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📅 On 23 April (religious feast) and the first Sunday of August (civil feast)
On 23 April Bagnolo del Salento celebrates its patron Saint George, portrayed here on foot rather than on horseback; the civil feast is held on the first Sunday of August.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Bagnolo del Salento, but an easy day trip away.
