Here, on the night between the nineteenth and the twentieth of January 1585, was born Giulio Cesare Vanini, philosopher, physician and naturalist; the house he was born in is still standing, of the middle fifteen hundreds, though only the central block is original. He became a Carmelite, fled to England, and in July 1612, in a London church and before a crowded audience in which Francis Bacon was sitting, publicly renounced the Catholic faith. He came back, could no longer return to Italy, and ended up in Toulouse in hiding, known only as a mysterious Italian with a strange name and great learning. They hunted him for a month and arrested him on the second of August 1618. On the ninth of February 1619 the parliament of Toulouse declared him guilty of atheism and of blasphemy against the name of God: it had his tongue cut out, then had him strangled and burned. The place of execution was cleaned in haste because the next day, in the church of Saint Paul, the wedding of the duke of Savoy was to be celebrated. Only in May and June, when two anonymous writings named him, was the executed man recognised as Vanini.
The town has lost nearly everything else. Of the seven specchie that stood in its territory only one is left, Specchia Silva, a cone of limestone slabs laid dry, more than ten metres high: and it is a third of what it was, because between the end of the eighteen hundreds and the middle of the nineteen hundreds its stones were carried off to make lime. That was one of the local trades: from the early eighteen hundreds families came here from all over the Salento to work in the quarries, in the lime kilns, in the oil, the wine and the cotton. The great wood of the Corte, which some scholars hold had been there about a thousand years, lasted until 1958; where it stood there is now a fountain, and of the old trees a few holm oaks remain. What does remain is Santa Maria della Strada, Romanesque: on the portal two crouching animals, a lion and a bull, on the architrave the Annunciation in bas-relief, and at the side, under the bell-gable, a Byzantine sundial with the hours written in Greek and in Latin.
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📅 Every year, from 1 to 4 August; on 8 September the Madonna della Strada is celebrated
Taurisano celebrates Saint Stephen from 1 to 4 August, in the church dedicated to him, as well as on his liturgical feast of 26 December. On 8 September, the Madonna della Strada is celebrated, venerated in the sanctuary of the same name.
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The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Taurisano, but an easy day trip away.
