The village was born, between the ninth and the tenth century, of those who escaped the destruction of Muro Leccese by the Saracens: the refugees scattered across the countryside and set up several hamlets, among them nearby Giuggianello. Then they began to quarrel over boundaries, and it was Giovanni Antonio Orsini Del Balzo who settled them, fixing the lines by decree and, so that everyone could see them, having a tower raised at the edge of each fief. From those towers most likely comes the town's coat of arms, which bears five of them.
Under the mother church lay a Basilian crypt cut entirely out of the rock, on a Greek-cross plan, with three aisles and frescoes from between the eleventh and the thirteenth century. It had been buried for generations and came back to light only in the nineteen-sixties, through the stubbornness of a parish priest; the paintings are so far gone that not even the church's dedication can be established. The village sanctuary, today of the Madonna delle Grazie, was recorded in the land register of 1749 as the church of the Madonna of Rheumatism and Sciatica.
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📅 Every year, from 7 to 9 September
From 7 to 9 September Sanarica, a municipality of 1,503 inhabitants in the province of Lecce, celebrates its patroness the Madonna delle Grazie.
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.
