Aeneas' Landing

“… Ci spingiamo innanzi sul mare, quando da lungi scorgiamo oscuri colli e il basso lido dell’Italia.  Le invocate brezze rinforzano, e già più vicino si intravede un porto, e appare un tempio di Minerva su una rocca. I compagni ammainano le vele e volgono a riva le prore. Il porto è incurvato ad arco dalla corrente dell’Euro; i suoi moli rocciosi protesi nel mare schiumano di spruzzi salati, e lo nascondono; alti scogli infatti lo cingono con le loro braccia come un doppio muro, e ai nostri occhi il tempio si allontana dalla riva …”

[Aeneid, Virgil]

 

Castro is also a place related to myth. It is said that the old port of the city could coincide with "the lower shore of Italy" on which the hero Virgilian, fleeing from Troy, landed.

In the third book of the Aeneid, Virgil says that Aeneas, even before docking, had seen from afar a port surmounted by a hill (just like in Castro) on top of which stood the temple of the goddess Minerva.

This thesis gained value following the 2015 excavation campaign, during which the bust of a statue referable to the goddess Minerva was found in the locality of “Capanne”. The recent discovery constitutes proof of the existence, in ancient times, of a place of worship dedicated to the goddess.

Furthermore, in the past, during previous archaeological excavations, other testimonies of the Magna Graecia age were found including a statue of the goddess Athena and a fragment in black paint which constitutes the oldest western geographical map of the classical age depicting Salento, which give further value to this thesis.

But that’s not all! According to the historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (and then all the commentators of Virgil), Aeneas landed in a place called Castrum Minervae, a name that the city of Castro assumed until the representation of the Tabula Peutingeriana (medieval reproduction of a more ancient Roman map third and fourth century A.C.), in the portolans of Arab and Turkish geographers up to the Renaissance.

The numerous historical and archaeological finds found in recent years by students from the University of Salento no longer leaves any doubt: Castro was the first Italian port of the Virgilian hero. To remind us of this legendary event, it was called “Port of Aeneas".