November 29, 2004

Salento Information Excerpt

A grim reminder of the ancient ...and now present Islamic terrorism. What a vilent world we live in now and it has been worse in earlier centuries.

Carol and friends are considering an Italian school in Otranto for a couple of weeks in the Spring.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
'Nirentine Riviera' on the Ionian Coast towards Nard and Gallipoli Otranto is the city of the eight-hundred martyrs, slaughtered by the Turks under Mohammed II in 1480 during the famous sack of this city. It had been living 'peacefully forgotten' (as is written on the epigraph on Minerva's Hill) when the Ottoman host descended upon it. The city resisted to the last, but after seventeen days of siege, when the walls had been breached and the lives of twelve thousand of its defenders had been lost, the remaining 800 survivors were horribly massacred."

No comments: