Martano

Martano is the most populous comune of the Grecìa Salentina, the area of the Salento where for centuries griko was spoken, the language of Greek origin that held out here until the last century: in griko the town is called Μαρτάνα, Martána. The Hellenisation began after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and lasted more than five hundred years, and the sign of it can still be seen in the church. The mother church, dedicated to the Assumption, was rebuilt in 1596 in place of the old building of Greek rite, but the columns of the doorway rest on two lion stylophores that come from that very church: the rite changed, the lions stayed. The baroque front, in Lecce stone quarried nearby, is crowded with angels, snakes, garlands, mascarons and sirens.

On the coat of arms, instead, there is a Roman centurion on horseback called Martius Pegaseus, which would suggest a Roman foundation. The philologist Luigi Pisanò, however, reconstructed a different story: the town's Roman origins would be the invention of a learned sixteenth-century humanist, who signed himself Martius and drew on the legend of the winged horse Pegasus. More probably the name contains the root mart, which recurs in many other place names and points to the shape of the ground or to the cult of Mars. What is certainly ancient are the megalithic monuments: the Specchia dei Mori, which in griko is called secla tu demonìu, the devil's specchia, and the tallest menhir in the region, close to five metres. Since 2017, finally, Martano also calls itself the city of aloe, because of the firms that grow and process it here.