Many millennia ago, as Jason sailed off with his band of Argonauts in pursuit of the Golden Fleece, seafaring Greeks of less mythical stock crossed the Straight of Otranto in search of peaceful and fertile lands.

Salento, the small peninsula upon which they landed, was infused with the richness of Hellenic culture as it evolved over time as Magna Graecia – a Greek dialect, in fact, is still spoken in many towns and villages 3,500 years later. Other cultures would come to dominate the region - Roman, Byzantine, Norman, Ottoman and Spanish – the layers of which have been written in the arts and beliefs of this extraordinary palimpsest of a land. And now, another adventurer from a distant shore, whose namesake references a mythological past, invites you to delight in the storied magic of Salento from an equally storied vantage point: