Brindisi Montagna

Brindisi Montagna, con i suoi 830 metri di quota, fu edificato in una posizione facile da difendere contro eventuali aggressori e ha visto sorgere insediamenti dell’uomo dall’Eneolitico (fine del III millennio avanti Cristo).

The presence of Arbëresh people in this municipality was registered after the earthquakes of 1456, the year in which the city was rebuilt and repopulated by those who came from Albania. This was decided by Pietrantonio IV Sanseverino, whose wife Irene was the granddaughter of the Albanian hero Gjergj Kastriot Skënderbeu.

In 1799 Brindisi took part in the freedom-loving uprisings, led by the priest Don Fabrizio De Grazia. On November 2, 1861, thanks to the fog that hid the city, the inhabitants of Brindisi escaped an attack by the brigand gangs Crocco, Borje and Serravalle.

The place is dominated by the Longobardo castle which allows you to enjoy the wonderful views of the Basento Valley and in its territory, guarded by the "Grancia" forest, is the home of the "Grancia San Demetrio" monastery, an ancient abbey, once dedicated to Saint Mary of hot water, probably from the proximity to a thermal spring. Donated by the Sanseverino princes to the Carthusian monks of Padula and built as the Grancia di San Demetrio in 1503, it became a large rural company run by lay monks. And precisely the creation of the settlements of lay monks is due to the nickname "Grancia", which derives from Latin and means "the place where the grain was stored".

In Brindisi Montagna, the Carthusians settled at the beginning of the 16th century, when the ancient Basilian monastery passed to the Fathers of the Certosa di Padula (of San Lorenzo), who built it Grancia di San Demetrio, on a par with the other Grancia di San Teodoro in Pisticci, wisely cultivating more than a thousand hectares.

The former abbey became a real farm run by the monks, who worked and cultivated over a thousand hectares of land with wisdom, method and ingenuity, reaching the height of its splendor in the seventeenth century. Inside you can still admire the ancient dairy for the transformation of milk, the cellars with attached millstones and the caves where the milk products were stored and matured.