The Archeological Park of Manduria: meeting the Messapians (Part 1)

 

A walk in the history of Manduria to meet the Messapians, a proud and rich people. Let’s follow their footprints in the Archeological Park of Manduria.

Ancient columns like those of a classic temple. There’s the emblem of Manduria on the wall and just a gate separates us from a distant world. It’s the passage that will allow us to know the history of Manduria and of its people, the Messapians. The visit of the Archeological Park of Manduria starts from here, before passing through its gate. Our guide Anna wants us to know that what we have in front of us, this scenographic entrance, is a forgery and the blocks at the base of the columns come from the Messapian walls. It makes me smile the fact that in order to protect a monument they took some parts of it. But Anna wants to be clear: just this one is unauthentic; everything we are going to see beyond the gate is true and documented, beyond the gate there’s the Messapians’s truth.

Go to Part 2

Leggi in italiano

We pass through the railing and a well welcomes us. The branches of an almond tree come out of it. It seems a fairy-tale picture, a tree inside a well, and it’s the physical transposition of something we’ve already seen. But where? Just a moment ago, at the entrance! The emblem of Manduria shows a well from which the foliage of an almond tree comes out. At each side of the well there are the letters F and M. Originally they stood for Famiglie Manduriane (Families of Manduria), referring to the Librone Magno, where all the families of Manduria were listed. Later, those initials were reinterpreted with Fons Manduriae (Fount of Manduria).

There it is, the Fount of Manduria, which welcomes the visitors of the park. This tree also is the main character of some legends. One for all, the one of golden almonds. Messapian women used to hang golden objects on its branches, as a pledge so their men could come back home from war safe and sound. Under the sunlight, the jewelry shone so much that foreigners thought that this land was so rich that nature itself produced gold. It’s one of the many myths that makes us understand how flourishing the society of the Messapians and their land were, at the point of being often a desire for conquest of other peoples.

The Plinian Fount

Although this well is represented on the emblem and has become one of the symbols of the town, the real fount is underneath it. Anna guides and accompanies us to a staircase that goes in an underground cavity.

We feel a bit like Dante who descends into the Hell guided by Virgil. But we’re not in the Underground, on the contrary we’re in a wonderfully suggestive place. In the centre of a large cave, alone and proud, under a beam of sunlight that comes from the skylight, there’s another circular construction that keeps and protects a spring. We close our eyes and leave that the feeling of fresh humidity lands on our faces and that water talks to us: drops resound in the cave and it seems to hear a cheerful dialogue around us. It’s a peaceful and mysterious place: the impression that we’re in an important place, once even sacred, it’s palpable. We’re in front of the Plinian Fount.

It’s called like this because Pliny the Elder wrote about it in his Naturalis Historia, describing it like a spring where the water level never diminished, even though the people of Manduria took from here their water supplies. They saw this thing as something miraculous and magic. After having felt the magic of the place, our guide explains the reason of this phenomenon: there are three tanks in the cave, linked one to each other with underground springs: they create a natural system that works like communicating vessels. That’s why the sound of water seems to come from everywhere but any defined place. At the time of the Messapians, this place was dedicated to water deity, the element associated to the feminine. They said that thanks to the water of this spring, Messapian women were so strong that they could lift the blocks of the walls (huge, as we’ll see later) and they hair was as resistant as ropes. They’re surely legends, but they give the idea of how important the fount was for the Messapians: in an area like Puglia, where surface water is scarce (but it’s abundant underground), the place where it came to surface became sacred.

With the passing of time, also Grand tour travelers went in Manduria after having read of the Plinian Fount. That was the period when they believed that this water was even miraculous and that could heal the sick. There’s a proof of this: the drawing realized by Ducros in the 18^th century, when the artist accompanied some travelers through the Kingdom of the two Sicilies. It shows three figures descending in the cave carrying a stretcher.

This is just the beginning of our travel to discover the Messapians. After having dove in the legendary history of one of the most important symbols of the town, in this atmosphere of pagan sacredness, we can return to the surface and know better the Messapian people.

The Messapian Walls and the moat

We move toward the Walls of the town. This is the larger megalithic park of the area: although Manduria was a medium-sized town, here we can find the most important archeological evidences.

The Walls of Manduria ensured the security, the political and administrative independence of the town, defending it from the attacks of Spartan, who tried to conquer the town in order to expand the territory of the Chora of Taranto.

The defensive complex was composed of three mighty sets of walls and a moat that opens in three points, in correspondence with the streets that connected Manduria with Lecce, Brindisi and Oria, the main towns with which it had commercial relationships. These gaps represented vulnerable points, but it was worth losing a part of the defense to ensure those flourishing exchanges and the archeological evidences are the witness of how fruitful they were. We know that in correspondence with those streets there were some doors: the rocks themselves say it with the holes of the jambs and of the central casement. Indeed, they say that each opening was controlled by a double door, strengthening those weak points. Our walk in history continues in the moat. Anna descends some stairs along the internal walls, slips in an opening in the wall and comes out in the moat. We follow her.

It was a secret passage that in the past was closed with a stone slab, which was moved in case of danger. This makes us understand that the moat wasn’t full of water (we said that there’s not much of it in Puglia). So, why are there so many fossilized oysters on the lower part of the walls? They date back the era when this area of Puglia wasn’t emerged yet and still decorate these rocks. We keep walking in this green lawn until we reach a point where the moat gets narrower, in a defined and geometrical way, like if those who were digging turned around something. What could be so important to sacrifice part of the defensive efficiency of the moat?

It’s possible that there could be a watchtower. There, where it seems that there’s a weak point, actually there’s a strengthening. Nothing was left to chance! Let’s continue our walk until we reach one of the most important point of the archeological park, and one of the richest in knowledge, the cemetery nucleus.

Our walk to discover Messapian civilization and the history of Manduria continues in the second part of this tale.