Welcome to Masseria Canestrello, Apulia

The region of Puglia

"Its countryside in spring seems like the Garden of Eden, the beaches on the coastline are a flowing treasure."

It was perhaps a Scirocco wind that blew into the sails of the Turkish sailing ships that in the year 1480 headed towards these shores and conquered Otranto.
The chronicle reporting the expedition is by Ibn Kemal, a scholar, (1468-1534), who describes Puglia as seen from the deck of the ships manned by Ghedik Ahmed Pascià.
Constantinople had just been conquered by the Ottomans. The New Muslim Empire, which came to substitute in a very traumatic way the Byzantine Empire, was in full expansion, trying to conquer a bridge-head on our coasts.

The winds that have since forever blown here in Puglia among the whitewashed walls and the boughs of the olive trees, represent the age-old struggle or better still the ups and downs of history between East and West; on these grounds where most of the battles were fought and where today you find nice and hospitable folk.
And maybe it was a cold wind blowing from North West which guided the Venetian galleons captained by Doge Pietro II Orseolo in the year 1002, who came to defend Bari, at the time under siege by the moors.

But if every land has the winds it deserves, which is the wind of Puglia?

"The "levantazzo", the name give to the eastern scirocco wind which flares up, as the boat people here say, in the hot afternoons. This wind comes from the Adriatic where the sun rises, a wind always charged with light and reflexes and which creates frequent and rough foamy waves, that beat on our rocky coastline and carry the seeds of myrtle and rosemary, and ripen the prickly pears and the grapes and fill the endless wheatfields with blood-red poppies."

This is Antonio's response, Antonio the celloist who yearned to be a fisherman, protagonist of "Levantazzo - stories of fishermen from the Tremiti islands", written by
Antonio Mallardi.

"Down here the sun rises from the sea and we go fishing when the "Tramontana" - the cold North westerly wind which brings only cold grey sea and frost from far away lands, dies down and the "Levante" - the Easterly wind that comes from Greece, the land of myths, shepherds and mermaids, dolphins and tuna fish, blows our way. The Levante is the wind of our oldest civilization, the same wind that carried Ulysses and Diomedes, a wind that has forever blown and still blows on us after millenia; even if Greece is only ruins today we still continue to receive warmth and life from this Eastern source."

These seas have seen the coming and going of soldiers and merchants, priests and conquerers; these shores saw the birth of that same culture and civilization which currently bridges Northern Europe to the Mediterranean.
The icons in the many churches of Puglia and its museums, the frescoes in the caverns, the stories of the monasteries, the castles inland and on shore - all these relate of the violent and bloody battles fought here in the past but also of the great reconciliations on these shores blessed with a glaring light from the skies at these latitudes.
There are the white stones of the churches, the luminous rose-windows of the facades, the golden illuminated manuscripts of the Exultet in the museums, the sunny castles, the open spaces of the landscape that tell the rich history of this land which today welcomes you.

"You cannot blame those who live on these shores; if you want to spend a serene life, go and live there".
Ibn Kemal

Carlantino