About Manduria
Manduria is a city located on the southern side of the Taranto Murgia, it is also part of north Salento along the Ionian coast. Manduria is equidistant from Taranto, Lecce and Brindisi and it belongs to the Taranto province but it is also very similar to the other two.
Manduria lays on flat land where here and there you have some isolated little hills (120-150 m s.l.m) belonging to the last part of the Taranto Murgia. Visiting it for the first time you will notice straight away the absence of surface waters, however being a karst region, it is characterised by numerous spring water wells. The combination of this type of landscape and rain over the centuries has created many shallow caves in the rock, a famous one of which is called Plinio’s well (Fonte Pliniano): here in the past our ancestors would take water for their domestic uses. Additionally, these caves have water continuously coming off the stone which the inhabitants were able to utilise sustaining them and greatly aiding their development.
About 8 miles away you will find the lovely coast and the towns of San Pietro in Bevagna and Torre Colimena. When you drive towards them you feel as if you have descended from a higher floor to a lower one where you can suddenly admire 18 km of seaside. It is a varied coastline made up of white sandy beaches, rocky shorelines and dunes rich in examples of protected flora and fauna of the Mediterranean. Still evident along the coastline are the towers which were part of the defences against the Saracen invaders of the 16th century. The shoreline is interrupted only twice by one river and a creek, named Chidro and Borraco respectively. The former is fed by stratum water and the latter fed by two separate subterraneous reservoirs.