Beneath these streets are the mills where men pressed olive oil underground for four centuries, living down there through the whole winter.
Under the streets of the old centre runs a network of underground oil mills cut into the rock, in use from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Oil was pressed below ground at a constant temperature, and the millers lived down there for months at a time during the pressing season.
Above ground: the sixteenth-century Risolo castle on the main square, and a Franciscan crypt held up by thirty-six columns.
Brindisi (BDS), about a hundred and ten kilometres, an hour and a half. The local railway exists but is unreliable and the station serves three towns from outside the built-up area.
In July and August the whole Salento is congested and expensive. The underground mills are by appointment only, not walk-in. Half a day is enough: use it as a base, not a destination.
Sources: tuttitalia.it/puglia/22-specchia/ ; touringclub.it/destinazioni/specchia
Each town is a day. The order of the drives, the nights and the meals is the part that ruins most first trips to small Italy. Twelve of them in one guide, free, and a letter a week after that.
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