In the Aeneid, Virgil told of Aeneas’ escape from Troy to Salento, but even today the dispute over the precise place of the landing is still open between at least four locations: Otranto, Porto Badisco, Castro and Leuca.

The provincial roads 87 and 358 run along the most evocative stretch of coastline of the Salento peninsula, the one that goes along the eastern flank from Otranto to Leuca, where among the countless scenic wonders one of the symbols of the Salento stands: the lighthouse of Punta Palascìa, the easternmost spot in Italy. An unmissable destination for walkers, riders and cyclists, in 2006 these areas were declared a protected natural area by the Apulia Region, thus legitimising a thousand-year-old beauty evident in the eyes of every visitor or inhabitant of these places rich in history.
And it is precisely in front of those rocky cliffs that Virgil speaks of Aeneas’ landing on the Italic coast. In the third book of the Aeneid – an epic poem describing the legendary story of the Trojan hero Aeneas, progenitor of the Roman people, after the fall of Troy and his subsequent escape from Butrint in Albania, in the northern part of ancient Epirus – Virgil tells of Anchises, Aeneas’ old father carried by his son and grandson Ascanius, who fills a large cup with wine and invokes the gods of the sea to grant favourable winds. In the meantime, their ships get closer and closer to the high and threatening rocks surrounding the opening of the natural harbour, which liesat at the foot of a mountain, on whose heights stood a great temple that the locals had offered to the goddess Minerva, the Athena of the Greeks.
What this natural port narrated by Virgil might have been has been the subject of debate, stories and legends for decades. For generations of Uggianesi and Otrantians, there was only one place: Porto Badisco, simply called Porto Enea by everyone. Over the years, Otranto, Castro and Santa Maria di Leuca have also claimed the prestigious primacy on the basis of unspecified literary references. If, in fact, in Otranto, the cult of the goddess Minerva has been widely documented, in Leuca it is believed that a temple dedicated to her had been erected on the promontory of today’s sanctuary.
But it was in 2007 that what is now considered definitive proof was found. The team of Prof. D’Andria, director of the School of Specialisation in Archaeology of the University of Salento, had found the remains of a temple in Castro with fragments of a statue of a female deity and many iron weapons offered to her. The ancient name of the town, Castrum Minervae, left no doubt: the warrior goddess Minerva was worshipped in that temple. A proof also subsequently certified in 2021 by La Rotta di Enea (Aeneas‘ Route), one of the forty-five Cultural Routes recognised by the Council of Europe, which in twenty-one stages including Turkey, Greece, Albania, Tunisia and the regions of southern Italy, retraces Aeneas’ journey before his arrive in Rome.
For now, therefore, official history gives primacy to Castro, whose old port is precisely named ‘Aeneas’ Port’, a bit like that of Porto Badisco, just 15 km away, called ‘Port Aeneas’ or simply ‘Aeneas’ Landing’.
So, if you pass through those parts, be careful about opening this conversation with the locals: you might find yourself in the middle of an endless and passionate debate…