Santa Cesarea Terme

About 7 km south of Porto Badisco stands Santa Cesarea Terme. The main feature of this small village on the eastern coast lies in the presence of healthy underground waters that are particularly renowned for their benefits. These are sulphurous-salty-bromine-iodine waters that can have a therapeutic effect on our body. Santa Cesarea Terme has four caves in which this type of water is present: the Grotta Grande also known as Grotta Solfurea, the Grotta Piccola or della Gattulla, the Grotta Solfatara and the Grotta Fetida.
There are two legends, one of pagan origin and one of Christian origin, surrounding the birth of these caves. Although the stories are decidedly different, both have the same common thread, namely the popular belief that the composition of the water, in which large quantities of sulphur are present, derives from the putrefaction of the body of an evil being. For the rest, the legends are very distant. The pagan tale is linked to the myth of Hercules and his battle against the Giants or Leuterni (from which the ancient name of the coast of Santa Cesarea derives, which for centuries was called Leuterno). The hero faced and defeated these thugs who had rebelled against the Gods on the Campi Flegrei, but some of them still managed to escape by hiding in some caves near our coasts. The sulphurous waters would therefore have originated from their putrefied bodies. The Christian tale, however, which has undergone various alterations and variations over time, remains essentially inextricably linked to the figure of the virgin Cesaria, pure and devoted, and to the presence of an antagonist who has played the role of the incestuous father, the pagan father and the Saracen pirate.
The town of Santa Cesarea owes much of its tourist appeal to the presence of the spa. We think in fact that during the siege of the Turks and the capture of Otranto in 1480, the devastating force of the invader arrived forcefully here too, reducing the village to anonymity for four long centuries. It was precisely the spa and its importance on a medical level that reawakened interest in this place and attracted more and more tourists in the following years.
At the crossroads of Western and Eastern cultures and traditions, of which this land was a laboratory and witness, Santa Cesarea has erected the most evocative of monuments: Villa Sticchi. The villa, built at the end of the 19th century on a rocky spur 20 meters above sea level, by order of Giovanni Pasca, the first concessionaire of the thermal waters of Santa Cesarea, is one of the most important expressions of the Moorish style in Salento. The charm of this palace also conquered Carmelo Bene, who in 1968 set his most successful film here: Nostra Signora dei Turchi, in which the evocation of the Battle of Otranto in 1480 is the occasion for a complex and tormented inner journey.

by Federica Giustiziero

Photos by Author