Monteroni di Lecce

The likeliest explanation of the name is that it is a compound of monte and of tirone, and that tirone, from a late Latin word, already meant a height in itself: the name says height twice over. It happened because in the Middle Ages people lost any sense of what tirone meant, took the word for a proper name, and felt the need to put the common noun in front of it. The other explanation, the one the coat of arms carries too, is that the Romans trained their recruits here — mons tyronum, the mount of the tirones — and coins have been found that fit it. On old maps the town is Monterone, or Monteroni, and on one of them, through a copyist's slip, Materane.

In the mother church, which is of the fourteenth century, two panes of glass are set into the floor of the central nave, and through them you look down into an ossuary whose frescoes are dated to the thirteenth. The church also keeps a silver Saint Anthony of 1777 and the skull of one of the martyrs of Otranto. In 1250 Frederick II granted the casale to a feudal family, and the barons who came after built the palace, the clock tower and two chapels. Feudalism was abolished in 1806 and the fief with it — but here, as in many towns of the south, the feudatories went on exercising their power for almost another century. Today part of the university campus of the Salento stands within the comune's territory, and since 2003 Monteroni has held the title of city.