Statte

Statte is the youngest comune in the province of Taranto: it was a frazione of the provincial capital, and stayed one until a referendum in June 1992; it became an autonomous comune in May 1993. Then came the borders, and that is the most instructive part of the story. A citizen of Statte, Pasquale Costantino, had reconstructed the historic boundaries of the frazione by putting together military maps, notarial deeds and the registers of the records office, and a regional law of 1993 recognised them as valid. A few months later, at the request of the comune of Taranto, the same Region redrew the boundaries of the new comune: it assigned Statte a much smaller area, coinciding with that of the old administrative district, and set aside the historic borders and the proofs that documented them.

The oldest nucleus of the town lies inside a lama, that is a small gravina, called Canale della Zingara: there the dwellings are dug into the rock, and those caves are still inhabited, fitted out as flats. The territory is scored with gravine and lame — the Leucaspide, the Mazzaracchio — and more than half of it falls inside the regional park Terre delle Gravine, a far higher share than that of any other comune in the park. The modern town, on the other hand, grew fast and almost without plans, in the years when Statte was one of the largest frazioni of Taranto and tripled its inhabitants with the employees of the great industry; curiously, that disorderly growth took the form of villas and small houses of one or two floors set in greenery, and made it one of the greenest comuni in the province, a couple of kilometres from the steelworks. And under it all runs the Triglio: an aqueduct built around 123 BC, which carried water to the villas up here and, further down, to the port of Taranto.