On the arms of this town in the lower Salento there is the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. The reason lies in the first of the three explanations given for the name: Racale is said to be a Roman foundation, the work of a freedman called Eraclio, to whom the choice of the emblem is also traced. The second hypothesis goes further back: in Greek times there is said to have been a place of worship here dedicated to Herakles. The third is the most circumstantial and the latest: the village would have been born of people who came from Heraclea Pontica, when the Byzantine emperor Basil the Macedonian ordered the repopulation of the lands between Ugento and Gallipoli, emptied by Saracen raids. Three different versions, then, which all end up on the same name, that of Herakles. That the place was inhabited long before is said in any case by the stones: in the countryside there are a specchia, among the best preserved in the Salento, and the Ospina dolmen.
Of the town's life two dates remain that say more than many pages. In 1295, under the barony of Pietro della Marra, the hamlet obtained from Charles II of Anjou the licence for a forum rerum venalium, that is a market of foodstuffs once a week, on Mondays: permission to buy and sell was a concession, and had to be asked of the king. In 1547 the Turks, having landed at San Giovanni and sacked Ugento, Felline and Alliste, appeared before Racale and were driven back with heavy losses near the hill of the Specchi; the castrum, with its walls and its towers, was never taken. What brought the town down was not war but the earth: the earthquake of 1743 destroyed the old twelfth-century parish church, rebuilt in 1756, and in the new church the late-Gothic frescoes of the old one later came to light by chance. Meanwhile Racale had passed to the Tolomei of Siena — the family of that Pia who appears in Dante's Purgatory — and here Marc'Antonio Tolomei was born, bishop of Lecce from 1485. Today it is one of the strongest shoemaking centres in Italy, and for years it made stockings above all.
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📅 Every year, on 20 January; a second feast is held on the last Sunday of May
Racale celebrates Saint Sebastian on 20 January; a second celebration is held on the last Sunday of May.
📅 Every year, on the last Sunday of May; the patron is also celebrated on 20 January
Racale also celebrates Saint Sebastian on the last Sunday of May, in addition to the winter date of 20 January.
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