What is it?
Descrizione
It was all enclosed in a small courtyard, the ancestor of today's open-space living rooms. The chatter, the long group embroidery sessions, the collective prayers, the folk wisdom that was shared here. The courtyard houses, a housing system widespread in the Mediterranean basin, represent the true guardians of daily Salento life: single-environmental housing units, often equipped with a vegetable garden behind, facing a common communicating courtyard that flows directly onto the street. These places tell of a past society, of patriarchal families, where the son built next to the father, of hard peasant lives and a daily life marked by sharing: "before, all houses were open,'' they say. The courtyard was the multipurpose center of the court overlooked by the various families, often related to each other. Here people socialized, worked and looked after the animals. Real micro-communities were created. Examples can be found on Pellegrino Street and Vito Fazzi Street.
