Grottaglie

Grottaglie is a town with 32 544 inhabitants ( 31 December 2012) in the province of Taranto in Apulia.

Location

The town is located 23 km east of Taranto.

History

The name of the village comes from the Latin crypts Aliae, that is, grottos, caves and the like. As 960 the barbarians the small villages Rudiae and Mesocoro and Taranto destroyed, fleeing residents in those caves where they lived then. Then came various hamlets and farmhouses, under which the Casale Cryptalearum by the Normans in the eleventh century donated to the Archbishop of Taranto.

At the end of the fourteenth century, this stronghold was fortified by walls.

Economy

The most significant feature is the ceramic production, which has become the main economic source over the centuries. It mainly deals with bricks, pots and even nativity figures. In the ceramics district, the so-called industrial area of the city, there are more than fifty workshops, which have been operating since the sixteenth century. The most characteristic manufactories are the so-called capasone ( a container of a large scale for wine or olive oil), the. Srulu (a type of pitcher for wine or water) and the Pumu ( a decorative object that is placed at the corners of the balconies ) In addition, there is a public art school in the village, which deals since 1889 with training in ceramic processing.

In Grottaglie is the airfield of Taranto. The civil part is operated by the airport company SEAP, which is responsible among other things for the airports of Bari and Brindisi. In the civil part, there are also production facilities of the company Alenia Aeronautica, which manufactures there parts of the fuselage of the new Boeing 787. On the military units of the Italian Navy aviator stationed.

Personalities

The sculptor Giuseppe Spagnulo comes from Grottaglie.