Cursi
Cursi, a busy town in the centre of the province of Lecce, sixteen kilometres from the sea, was founded as a staging post, by the Romans around the middle of the third century BC., shortly after the victorious war against Taranto. During the early Middle Ages, probably in the ninth century, during the Byzantine domination,the Church of St. Stephen or St. George was built.
However, only at the beginning of the Modern Age was the town as we know now born. Of course, it was much smaller, the merging of two small villages, one Greek, the Trioti and the other Latin, the Logne. The Greek part died out altogether in 1680.
Since the end of the fourteenth century to the early nineteenth century the Maramonti ruled and they built the Baron's Palace, the Venturi, the Cicinelli and Caracciolo.
The most beautiful place to visit in Cursi is the Church of the Convent of Agostignani, built in the late fifteenth century, with its altars in Baroque style, including a very valuable one dedicated to St. Nicholas of Tolentino.
In the spring of 1799 the Agostignani monks rang the church bells to call the peasants to revolt, to support the action of the Royal and Catholic Cardinal Ruffo against the French invaders and the Jacobins.
Prof. Donato De Vito