DiscoVereto 2026, from the hills to the sea: new discoveries in Vereto and San Gregorio, and a new story for the Centopietre and the forgotten relic of John the Baptist

Ten weeks of excavation have made it possible to trace the history of Vereto from its earliest protohistoric settlements to late antiquity, and to revisit its ancient landing place at San Gregorio. The research has also extended to the construction of the region’s collective memory: documents, monuments and traditions now make it possible to attribute with a high degree of certainty to Altamura a relic of St John the Baptist once venerated in Patù, and to propose a new interpretation of the origins of the legend of Siminiano and the Centopietre.

With the conclusion, on 2 October, the second excavation campaign marks the end of the first major season of DiscoVereto, the archaeological research programme of the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, under the scientific direction of Valentino Nizzo, with the coordination of topographical activities entrusted to Dr Angela Bosco (University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’), in collaboration with Dr Rosario Valentini of the University’s BIMA Centre. The project is carried out under a licence from the Ministry of Culture and under the supervision of the Superintendence for Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the provinces of Brindisi, Lecce and Taranto.

From 18 May to 2 October 2026, with a break during the summer months, the two field campaigns involved students, archaeologists and specialists for a total of ten weeks, first on the hill of ancient Vereto and subsequently also at San Gregorio, its landing place on the Ionian Sea. Fieldwork was coordinated by the professional archaeologist Alessandro Rizzo, under the scientific direction of Valentino Nizzo and with the collaboration of Michele Bonfrate; the underwater archaeologist Dr Angelo Cossa collaborated on the underwater surveys and recoveries. During the two campaigns, over 40 students from the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ and other Italian universities took part in the research, transforming the site into a vibrant centre of university education. The topographical and digital documentation, coordinated by Angela Bosco with the collaboration of Rosario Valentini, incorporated high-precision surveys and tools for the digital and three-dimensional reconstruction of the archaeological evidence.

The research was made possible by an initiative of Patù Town Council, which promoted the project locally and allocated resources to the archaeological activities, initially from the PNRR ‘Storie Meridiane’ programme and subsequently from the regional SMART-In programme, as part of the project ‘The Ionian coast between Greeks and indigenous peoples: Torre San Gregorio, Approdo di Vereto’.

The most significant result is not a single artefact, but the opportunity to begin reconstructing the long history of Vereto, by following—without any prior selection—all the traces preserved in the ground: from the most recent phases of the Roman and late antique settlement right through to the Messapian city, the Archaic period and the earliest protohistoric settlements.

Vereto: beneath the Roman town, traces of the earliest human settlement

At the top of the hill, investigations have resumed and expanded upon the areas excavated during the first campaign, extending also into the land to the south of the Church of the Madonna di Vereto.

The most superficial layers bear witness to the profound transformations the site has undergone in the modern era due to agricultural activities, the construction of terraces and the subsequent looting of ancient structures. Even these layers, however, have yielded significant finds: fragments of Roman and pre-Roman pottery, bronze coins, metal objects, a fibula and even a fragment of Egyptian blue, discovered in the agricultural layer and therefore out of its original context.

The extension of the trenches also made it possible to identify masonry constructed from rubble stone and calcarenite, built-up surfaces and, above all, the traces left by the systematic stripping of ancient buildings. A large structure built from blocks, already identified during the first excavation campaign, was in fact partially obliterated by a trench dug to recover and rework the building materials. Beneath these interventions, the bedrock shows extensive traces of artificial levelling, carried out to create regular surfaces and foundation levels for the structures.

It was precisely in the depressions in the rock that one of the most evocative finds of the campaign came to light. A semi-circular arrangement of stones, some clearly charred by fire, enclosed an area rich in charcoal, burnt animal bones and coarse pottery, including the reconstructible base of a cooking pot. The find has been provisionally interpreted as a hearth dating to the earliest phases of occupation of the area, between the late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age. Analytical study of the materials will enable the chronology to be refined.

This finding further expands the historical depth already suggested by the first campaign and confirms the importance of conducting a stratigraphic investigation of the entire hill, without limiting the research to the monumental phase of the Messapian city.

The city’s final centuries

The same chronological depth is evident in the rooms already uncovered during the May and June excavation campaign. The excavation has made it possible to distinguish successive phases of use, transformation and abandonment.

In one of the rooms, layers have been identified that can be interpreted as domestic waste dumps, containing animal bones, shells, ash, charcoal and abundant late Roman pottery. The floor made direct use of the carefully levelled bedrock. A Hellenistic-period arched fibula, found in a residual position within later masonry, provides further evidence of pre-Roman occupation of the area.

In the adjacent room, two distinct earthen floor levels were identified. The oldest rested on a complex rubble crawl space built for insulation and drainage, consisting of three superimposed layers. The excavation has not yet reached the geological substrate in this sector: the archaeological sequence therefore continues deeper down and remains one of the areas to be investigated in future campaigns.

These findings help to provide archaeological context for the final centuries of Vereto’s existence. The town did not disappear suddenly with the Roman conquest, but continued to transform over the centuries, right up to late antiquity, whilst older buildings were altered, demolished, stripped and reused. The discovery, made during the first excavation campaign, of a lamp bearing the Chrismon just a few metres from the church of the Madonna di Vereto also confirms the particular importance of the Christian and late antique phases at the summit.

San Gregorio: the excavation reaches the landing place of Vereto

The main development of the second campaign was the extension of the research to the coast, in the San Gregorio inlet, traditionally identified as one of the landing places controlled by ancient Vereto.

The aim was to verify on the ground structures that had already been partially identified in the research conducted by Cosimo Pagliara in 1971, to better understand their function and to relate them to the overall layout of the bay. The investigations had to contend with a particularly complex situation, characterised by ancient looting, modern alterations, recent works and severe slope erosion.

An initial test excavation focused on the area of an ancient well fed by the spring water system, which constituted one of the bay’s key resources. Around its mouth, a structure shaped like a horseshoe was identified, built from large blocks of calcarenite and rubble. A little further south, a quadrangular structure emerged, its walls and floor lined with a durable, lime-based waterproof coating. Its configuration suggests the existence of a water-holding basin, perhaps a drinking trough, forming part of a wider water supply system.

The investigation of the large block structure, first identified in the 20th century, has also proved particularly significant. The excavation made it possible to trace its extension eastwards even where the blocks had been removed: the trace was preserved by the thin bed of disintegrated calcarenite on which the masonry rested.

In the light of the data currently available, the structure is provisionally interpreted as a ramp used for port operations and for the loading and unloading of heavy goods from vessels. This hypothesis is set to be verified through further investigations, but it allows us, for the first time, to begin to interpret the spatial organisation of the ancient landing stage from an archaeological perspective.

A monumental slipway for vessels

A third sector has yielded evidence even more closely linked to the use of the coastline.

On the western side of the promontory, the rocky outcrop features an artificial cut forming a broad slope descending towards the sea. Its morphology has led to its interpretation as a monumental slipway intended for the launching and hauling of boats, probably also reused in later periods as a descent ramp.

The area also preserves large, squared blocks and a stratigraphy heavily influenced by wave action, the collapse of natural cavities and the downward slippage of the overlying soil. Precisely for this reason, the materials found in the colluvial deposits cannot be considered in their original context, but they nevertheless constitute valuable evidence of the stratigraphy that was once present higher up the slope.

The finds include fragments of late Roman amphorae, a lamp, two bronze fishhooks, a coin of Tiberius in an excellent state of preservation, a Byzantine follis and a coin provisionally attributed to the mint of Ugento. Their chronological range confirms just how long and complex the settlement of the bay was and indicates the presence, at higher elevations, of strata dating from the Roman Imperial and Byzantine periods, some of which have now slid down towards the coast.

A unified system thus emerges from the town to the harbour: the Vereto hill, the paths leading down to the sea, the water supply structures, the areas designated for mooring operations and the infrastructure carved directly out of the rock. The second campaign has transformed the relationship between the inland centre and its coastal extension into a concrete archaeological question, which constitutes one of the main focuses of Leucantica’s future research.

The coastal investigations also benefited from the collaboration of Angelo Cossa for underwater surveys and recoveries, a particularly valuable contribution to understanding the inlet not only from the mainland but also in its maritime and submerged dimensions, which culminated in the recovery of three significant stone anchor stocks and several architectural elements still under study.

The involvement of local residents and the wider community, via the mission’s social media channels, has also made it possible to identify what likely remains of the Patù menhir – which disappeared in the early 20th century – and to solve the minor mystery of some Messapian letters added in modern times to the San Gregorio blocks.

From the excavation at Centopietre

DiscoVereto was conceived from the outset as a diachronic study. Being archaeologists of pre-Roman Italy does not, in fact, mean seeking only what belongs to the Messapian phase: it means tracing the stratigraphic layers without prejudice, right up to the most recent transformations and the construction of the territory’s historical memory.

It is not, therefore, the study of the pre-Roman period that has ‘chanced upon’ the Middle Ages. It is the desire to understand Vereto in its entirety that has raised a new question: what happened in the area when the ancient city gradually lost its form and its role? That question inevitably leads to Campo Re, San Giovanni Battista and the Centopietre.

It is from this perspective that the research has also revisited one of the most enigmatic and debated monuments of Capo di Leuca: the Centopietre di Patù, designated a national monument in 1875.

Once considered a megalithic, pre-Hellenic or Messapian structure, the Centopietre is now recognised as medieval, though it continues to raise questions about its precise chronology and original function. Its very historiographical trajectory demonstrates how a monument can take on a completely different meaning when freed from preconceived interpretations and re-examined through the lens of archaeology, written sources and landscape history.

This research is intertwined with an urgent conservation issue. The monument is currently in a state of severe disrepair, with the frescoes almost entirely lost and several roof slabs fractured or in danger of collapsing. The Municipality of Patù has therefore, in agreement with the Superintendency, initiated the process leading to compulsory purchase, with the aim of enabling a comprehensive programme of safety measures, restoration and enhancement.

The Finger of St John: from Patù to Altamura

It was precisely the Centopietre study that led to an in-depth examination of a second story, seemingly unrelated to the excavation but closely linked to the construction of the place’s collective memory.

A tradition documented in the sixteenth century recounted the discovery, in the nearby church of St John the Baptist, of a relic attributed to the saint: a finger said to have come from the Holy Land, to which local devotion attached particular importance.

A finger that inevitably evokes the most famous image of John the Baptist, that in which the saint points to the Lamb of God – ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’ – and which, for this very reason, could take on extraordinary devotional significance. All trace of that relic was subsequently lost.

Research conducted by Valentino Nizzo has now compared sources from the Salento and Altamura regions, which, with a very high degree of probability, identify the relic once venerated in the territory of Patù and Leuca as the one still preserved in Altamura Cathedral, inside an ancient arm-shaped reliquary. The relic is documented in Altamura as early as the sixteenth century, and an independent Altamura tradition explicitly states that it originated from Leuca: its arrival in the town in the Murgia region must therefore have taken place during the sixteenth century and, in any case, before 1584.

It remains to be clarified, however, who actually facilitated the transfer. The historical context, however, points in a particularly significant direction. In the second half of the sixteenth century, Patù, Leuca and Alessano were under the rule of the Gonzaga family, whilst Altamura was under the rule of the Farnese family. The two families, initially divided by deep-seated conflicts, formally reconciled in 1560; in the years that followed, relations strengthened, and the next generation saw Ottavio Gonzaga and Alessandro Farnese join forces in the military campaign against the Ottoman Empire, culminating in the great Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

It is therefore possible that the circulation of a prestigious relic such as that of John the Baptist was also facilitated by these dynastic, religious and courtly networks, within which the exchange of relics could help to strengthen relationships, devotions and alliances. The available documentation does not yet allow us to identify the intermediary with certainty, nor to establish the physical route by which the fragment reached Altamura; however, it does enable us to situate the transfer within a historical context far broader than previously imagined.

The Gonzaga circle in Alessano itself was by no means culturally peripheral. Andrea Gonzaga had gathered around his court men of letters, scholars and men of culture, thereby integrating Capo di Leuca into the major Italian aristocratic networks of the sixteenth century. In 1587, the scholar Cesare Rao spoke of ‘virtuous men, men of letters [and] gentlemen’ in his company, describing him as a patron and champion of men of letters. It was precisely within this milieu – where local history, devotion, chivalric culture and dynastic politics constantly intersected – that the more complex tradition of Siminiano and Centopietre also seems to have taken shape during those same decades.

Siminiano, Charlemagne and the warrior saints of Europe

It is within this same context that the figure of Siminiano – the mysterious knight whom centuries-old tradition holds to have fallen fighting against the Moors alongside Charlemagne and to have been buried in Centopietre – also takes on a new meaning.

Charlemagne and his paladins did not fight at Patù. Yet in the sixteenth century, the confrontation with the Ottoman world was a very real reality for the communities and noble families of Capo di Leuca. At the same time, the great narratives of Carolingian lore – from the 'Chanson de Roland' to 'Orlando Furioso' and 'Aspromonte' – constituted a shared language amongst the courts of Europe.

These historical records allow us to observe the story’s formation almost in real time. The 1532 inscription at San Giovanni Battista already mentions a King Charles, the Moors, St John and the relics; however, neither Siminiano nor the identification of Centopietre as his tomb is mentioned yet. It was only a few decades later, in the anonymous 'Historia della città de Leuche' printed in Padua in 1588, that the narrative appeared in its complete form: Charlemagne, Orlando, the war against the Moors, the fallen knight and the ‘Chapel of a Hundred Stones’.

A comparison with European traditions has revealed significant parallels with the figure of the warrior saint Saint Émiland or Saint Milan, who fell heroically against the Saracens in the time of King Charles at San Juan de Luze and was buried in a monumental sarcophagus; his memory became intertwined with that of Similien, the ancient bishop of Nantes, and with that of Millán/Aemilianus de Cogolla, patron saint of Spain, venerated as a ‘matamoros’ alongside Saint James, whilst the near-identical names of the place where he fell and the church of ‘San Giovanni di Leuche’ near a monumental tomb of ‘a hundred stones’ must have justified, according to the mindset of the time, the appropriation of his identity and his transformation into Baron Siminiano, a fact confirmed by a wealth of evidence.

This is not to suggest the direct transmission of a single legend from Burgundy to Salento. The most interesting fact is rather the existence of a shared cultural language, through which enigmatic tombs, warrior saints, Saracens, relics and Carolingian material could be continually reinterpreted and adapted to different places.

From this perspective, Capo di Leuca no longer appears as a peripheral region. Even more so after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the ‘Santuario de finibus terrae’ had become the furthest reachable point on a pilgrimage route ideally directed towards the Holy Land. It was one of the extremities of a vast geography of European devotion and mobility: the so-called Via Francigena led pilgrims to the Salento finis terrae and the embarkation points for the East, whilst in the West the Way of St James linked France and Spain. The 'Historia de Leuche' of 1588 itself establishes a link between Carlo, the ‘Camino de S. Iacomo’ and the liberation of Leuca from the Saracens.

Overlapping with this religious network was that of chivalric literature and Renaissance courts. The Gonzagas, lords of Alessano, were directly embedded in this world: Ferrante Gonzaga was the son of Isabella d’Este and belonged to the courtly circle in which Ariosto’s 'Orlando Furioso' had first found success; in the following generation, Ferrante II Gonzaga would have had dealings with Torquato Tasso. The story of the relic adds a further concrete element to this picture: these same dynastic networks could bring together people, cults, objects and memories.

The ‘invention of tradition’

This is the broader significance of the research: the ‘invention of tradition’ is not the same as deliberate falsification.

The church of San Giovanni existed. The tombs of Campo Re existed. The Centopietre existed. A relic venerated as part of the body of John the Baptist existed. The ruins of Vereto existed, as did the pilgrimage to Leuca and the very real fear of Muslim raids. And there were dynastic, courtly and religious networks capable of linking Capo di Leuca to Altamura, to the great Italian courts and to the Mediterranean of Christian Lepanto.

In the sixteenth century, these real elements were gradually woven together into a narrative capable of attributing a unified meaning to them. Charlemagne, Orlando and the Paladins provided the language through which to explain the ruins of a city, the tombs on a plain, a church, a relic and a monument whose origins had by then been forgotten.

The legend therefore does not lose its value once its origins are understood. It becomes, in itself, an exceptional historical source, capable of showing how a society constructed its own past and situated a seemingly peripheral territory within the broader political, religious and cultural landscape of Renaissance Europe.

Research that builds community: education, schools and communication

The 2026 season was also an experiment in public and participatory archaeology. The excavation site was not conceived as a space reserved for specialists, but as a place where research, education, conservation and public engagement could proceed hand in hand.

Throughout the ten weeks of activity, the excavations remained open to the community via guided tours, meetings with archaeologists, educational activities and initiatives aimed at schools; in September, this experience was extended to San Gregorio as well. Already during the first campaign, over a thousand visitors had followed the progress of the investigations at close quarters, and 230 pupils from local schools had been involved in the educational activities. Taking the two campaigns together, visitor numbers ran into the thousands, whilst the number of pupils from schools of all levels ran into the hundreds.

The engagement with schools played a special role: explaining the work of archaeologists directly on site means making visible the transition from artefact to question, from stratigraphy to interpretation, and from discovery to conservation. The curiosity of the youngest participants was an integral part of this experience, not merely a side activity to the excavation.

The same approach guided the university training programme. Over 40 students from the Università degli Studi di Roma ‘L’Orientale’ and other Italian universities took part in the two campaigns, working in shifts across the various sectors of Vereto and San Gregorio. On the Leucantica website, each participant is recognised as a key figure in this collective endeavour: communication serves not only to present the results, but also to give visibility to the work, time and expertise of those contributing to the research.

This principle also applies to social media and video documentation. Communication was carried out whilst respecting conservation requirements, seeking to transform the immediacy of digital media into an opportunity to engage the public with the methodology, rather than merely the exceptional nature of the discovery. Updates from the excavation site, images, brief insights, interviews, lectures and videos enabled the public to follow the progress of the research almost in real time via Leucantica, the social media channels @DiscoVereto and YouTube @Etruschannel.

Public engagement was also fostered through a series of conferences and presentations organised by archaeologist Daniela Ventrelli, co-founder of Leucantica, in collaboration with Mariangela Sammarco, director of the Vereto Archaeological Museum. Between September and October, these events brought the research on Vereto into dialogue with other themes and projects in Apulian archaeology, ranging from the presentation of Francesco D’Andria’s book "Le radici ca tieni" to reflections on collecting and the collections of Ruvo, right through to the presentation of 'Rubi antiqua. Excavations, collections, museums. Fame and Fortune of Ruvo’s Antiquities in Nineteenth-Century Europe’. The excavation site thus continued to come to life within the museum’s spaces and through public debate, extending the participatory dimension of the research beyond the excavation sites themselves.

The aim is to share not only the final result, but the research process itself: to show how an archaeological finding comes about, why a hypothesis might change during the excavation, and how knowledge constitutes the first and indispensable tool for conservation. It is within this framework that DiscoVereto forms part of the wider Leucantica project, which combines field research, the study of sources, landscape analysis, digital technologies, training and community participation.

From the public handover to future research

The presentation of the findings on 5 October at the headquarters of the Superintendency in Lecce – attended by Superintendent Antonio Zunno, the mayor of Patù, Gabriele Abaterusso, Father Gianluigi Marzo, Director of the Office for Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage of the Diocese of Ugento – Santa Maria di Leuca, and Valentino Nizzo – was not an end in itself, but rather the first presentation of research that is still in full swing.

The findings will be incorporated into the new catalogue of the Vereto Archaeological Museum, edited by Mariangela Sammarco, in the section dedicated by Valentino Nizzo to the history of Vereto from its origins through to Romanisation and the construction of its historical memory. The research will then be further developed in a monograph dedicated to the Centopietre, the relic of St John, the origins of the Siminiano tradition and the European parallels that have emerged during the investigation.

Further fieldwork will, however, need to verify and refine the as yet preliminary interpretations that have emerged at Vereto and San Gregorio: the chronology of the earliest protohistoric settlements, the layout of the Messapian and Roman structures on the hilltop, the transformations during the late antique period, the relationship between port infrastructure, water systems and boat-hauling areas, and, more generally, the way in which the ancient city organised the relationship between the hill, the surrounding territory and the sea.

For the full article: “From legend to the history of the Centopietre”.