Grotta Romanelli

Grotta Romanelli consists of a single large 35-meter-long room located 7.5 meters above sea level. It can be reached more comfortably from the sea, but access to it is forbidden.

The Romanelli was discovered in the early 1900s by Paolo Emilio Stasi and is still the subject of studies today, as artifacts dating back to the Paleolithic have been found inside.

Large mounds of red and brown earth covered three human skeletons and various tools that attest to the presence in Salento of men, of modern structure, who had arrived from Africa about 35,000 years earlier.

Following the discovery of Grotta Romanelli, in Italy the expression "Romanellian Palaeolithic" spread among experts in the sector, used to indicate a temporal phase of the third and last subdivision of the Palaeolithic, which in the convention of Europe, Africa and Asia corresponds to the upper Paleolithic.

The artistic manifestations found on the walls of the Romanelli Grotto have a great importance: magnificent graffiti, the work of ancient men, which mostly represent hunting scenes.

Finally, inside the cave, the presence of fossils was also found as witnesses of the presence in southern Italy of proboscidean animals (ancient rhinos and elephants), or large canids (hyenas, wolves). These findings confirm the historical reconstruction according to which the territory of Salento was once characterized by a savannah which, after the ice age, turned into a sort of tundra, even populated by polar animals.