centro storico, di pianura, difensivo, San Giorgio Ionico, San Giorgio (denominazione storica, ante 1862), San Giorgio sotto Taranto (denominazione storica, 1862-1926)

San Giorgio Ionico is a medieval settlement on the plain, its name a palimpsest of administrative history (San Giorgio under Taranto, until 1926). The oldest monuments here are not medieval, but from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the mother church of Santa Maria del Popolo, rebuilt in the late 1700s on an earlier site; the church of Maria Santissima Immacolata; the chapel of the Madonna della Croce. The historic centre is also marked by noble palaces, the eighteenth-century Palazzo Imperio, Palazzo Alberini-De Siati, Palazzo Alberini-Caramia, and the twentieth-century castle of the D’Ayala Valva counts, with its neighbouring Calvary chapel. Scattered throughout are ancient votive edicules. Archival sources confirm the existence of the Casale di San Giorgio between the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, but no architecture from that phase survives. The first known mention of the mother church is in a 1577 visitation record; it may date from after 1524, when the baron Antonio Muscettola repopulated the casale with Albanian refugees. The original core of the baronial palace was built by Giulio Cesare Albertini in 1615.

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