Patù stands at the southern tip of Cape Leuca, and its history begins with the end of another town: Vereto, a Messapian centre destroyed by the Saracens in the ninth century. On 24 June 877, in the plain still called Campo Re at the foot of Vereto, the army sent by the king of France Charles the Bald stopped the invasion, and to mark the victory the church of San Giovanni Battista was built — whose feast falls on 24 June. That church is made of slabs taken from the buildings of Vereto, and inside it still keeps pieces of the dead city. By tradition, Patù was founded in 924 by the survivors who came down the slope.
The name, they say, comes from the Greek pathos, suffering, in memory of what had happened at Vereto; another explanation traces it to the keeper of the Veretines' granary, one Pato, which became Patù under the French. Beside the church stand the Centopietre, a megalithic structure held to be the tomb of a knight killed by the Saracens before the battle. On the mother church, of 1564, the portal carries an inscription that has caused much argument: Terribilis est locus iste, this place is terrible.
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📅 Every year, on 29 September
On 29 September Patù celebrates co-patron Saint Michael the Archangel; the village's other patron, Saint John the Baptist, is celebrated on 24 June with an old fair.
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.
