centro storico, di crinale, collinare, radiale, Strongoli, Strongylon (denominazione storica, dal VI sec.), Petelia (denominazione originaria)

The centro storico of Strongoli, once Petelia, a city of Magna Graecia, is a place where time has not been kind, but has left a rich, if melancholy, archaeology. The medieval borgo, which began to take its current form in the early Middle Ages, was a fortified civitas whose bishop also acted as its feudal lord. This dual power is legible in the ambitious scale of the cathedral. Today, the historic core is heavily reworked and much abandoned, a landscape of crumbling buildings. Its rewards are for the patient: numerous Roman remains; the imposing Norman castle ruins, much altered; a matrix church housing second-century BC pedestals from the forum of ancient Petelia; and a medieval clock tower bearing a Roman inscription. Further churches, palazzi from the 16th and 18th centuries, and convents of the mendicant orders punctuate the radial, hillside plan. Out at Murge, the sparse ruins of archaic Macalla hint at an even deeper past.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.