The name of this village is a prayer. Tradition tells that after the Turks took Otranto, in 1480, the people of the hamlet of San Nicola commended themselves to the Madonna, who appeared holding a palm with an army behind her; the Turks, believing the Aragonese were coming, withdrew. From that day the hamlet was called Palmarice, then Palmaricce, and finally Palmariggi: you who hold the palm. And the palm ended up on the coat of arms, at the top of the mother church's front.
The rest of the village lies underground. In the limestone the Basilian monks dug crypt-churches and painted them; out in the fields the karst opens into chasms that here are called vore, and menhirs and dolmens of the Bronze Age break the surface. Above one of those rock churches, where a Byzantine icon is venerated that a shepherd boy is said to have found in 1595, the sanctuary of the Madonna di Montevergine was built in 1707: from the nave a stairway leads down to the crypt. Of the Aragonese castle two towers remain.
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📅 Every year, on the last Sunday of July
On the last Sunday of July Palmariggi, a municipality of 1,554 inhabitants in the province of Lecce, celebrates its patroness Maria Santissima della Palma.
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.
