Population: 2845 inhabitants
In total area: 16 kmXNUMX
Density: 172 inhabitants/kmXNUMX
Accessibility : Sternatia is 16,5 km from the Salento capital and can be reached from the SS. 16 Adriatica.
Common address of Sternatia, Lecce: Piazza Municipio
Tel .: 0836 - 666001
The oldest historical evidence attesting to the presence of human settlements in the Sternatia area undoubtedly dates back to the Neolithic, a period to which, most likely, the three menhirs still visible at the beginning of the last century can be traced back.
Sternatia is part of Grecìa Salentina , a linguistic island in Salento where a language of Greek origin, Griko , is spoken.
The historic center of Sternatia is a fairly compact and distinct nucleus within the context of the entire town.
There is a dense network of tunnels and galleries underground, which connects the numerous underground oil mills (hypogeal carpets) used in their function until the middle of the last century.
In 1480 Sternatia was almost completely razed to the ground by the Turks, making it almost impossible to distinguish, within the inhabited centre, buildings prior to that date.
Of what was in Sternatia in the Middle Ages, only a section of the city walls and some remains of ancient buildings remain, such as the remains of the ancient Byzantine castle identifiable in some houses, located between via Giudeca and piazza Castello, in which there are clear architectural elements that attest to their origin.
Also dating back to the Byzantine era are the Basilian crypts of San Pietro and San Sebastiano and the chapel of the Holy Trinity , known as the chapel of the Holy Spirit, but these are located outside the ancient walls.
All that survived the devastating Turkish fury was incorporated into the new sixteenth-century buildings, which almost all present the typical features of Renaissance art (for what little could be reflected in the modest houses of the village), and into the seventeenth-century buildings with typical Spanish features.
The structure of the houses, however, retains its Greek typicality in the courtyard layout, around which the daily life of several families took place, gathered in the small microcosm it represented.
In the historic center, Piazza Castello offers us a spectacular setting with the imposing facade of the eighteenth-century Palazzo Marchesa Granafei , which with the golden color of the Lecce stone from which it is built, shines on summer afternoons in the setting sun.
The current mother church of Sternatia , which suddenly appears on the left side of Via Platea, strikes with its tall and slender facade, made even more imposing by the small space of the square in front and the perspective hidden by the houses opposite.
It stands on the foundations of an older Greek rite church dedicated to San Giorgio.
The church houses numerous statues made of Lecce papier-mâché dating back to the 1751th and XNUMXth centuries, as well as a wooden statue of Neapolitan manufacture, donated to the church by the Marquis Giuseppe Granafei in XNUMX.
Source: www.comune.sternatia.le.it