{"id":41869,"date":"2021-04-19T09:45:59","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T09:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/pajare-salentine-ancient-rural-constructions\/"},"modified":"2025-02-19T14:16:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T14:16:06","slug":"pajare-salentine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/en\/pajare-salentine\/","title":{"rendered":"Pajare Salentine: Ancient Rural Constructions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Travelling around Salento and especially in the <strong>Salento countryside<\/strong>, we are intrigued by ancient stone constructions with a circular shape: these are <strong>the Pajare Salentine<\/strong>; similar to the Trulli of the Itria Valley but with a cut cone. The <strong>first constructions<\/strong> date back to the year 1000, but researchers date them much earlier.<\/p>\n<h2>Pajare Salentine<\/h2>\n<p>They are the result of land reclamation, when the land was strewn with stones and therefore difficult to cultivate. Since in the past nothing was thrown away, they were used to build a shelter and store straw, from which it takes its name, and work tools.<\/p>\n<p>They did not need engineers but the ingenuity of man who, with the help of his family and neighbours, in Salento they say \u201ca mani cumuni\u201d could build these small stone huts.<\/p>\n<p>With the passage o time and land reclamation, the Pajare Salentine became larger and larger until they became true typical Salentine houses, especially for those who did not have a house. Thus, farmers were able to stay close to their land and cultivate it for their own needs.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Pagghiara.jpg#\/media\/File:Pagghiara.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/6\/60\/Pagghiara.jpg\/1200px-Pagghiara.jpg\" alt=\"Pajara Salentina\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" title=\"\"><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pajara Salentina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>One of the many curiosities that have come down to us is that the doors of the Pajare Salentine were very low, forcing the Saracens to bend down when entering and becoming easy prey for those who had to defend themselves. Inside, there was very little space, since the walls were three to five metres thick and the families were very large, so half of it was used for a bed made of straw in Salento dialect \u201clatt\u00e8ra\u201d and the little that remained was used for a small bench with pieces of log to sit on \u201cPasotri\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Gr3MKKphwHQ?start=21\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In the centre, a <strong>large clay plate<\/strong> was used to eat the frugal meal. The menu was always the same, made from boiled wild herbs that they knew well, and grains that they could grow. Our grandparents recount that the beans were eaten with an onion peel as a spoon, because those few pieces of cutlery were not enough for everyone.<\/p>\n<p>Usually, a small oven was built next to the Pajara, made from the same materials as the Pajara, which was used to make bread for the weekly needs and <strong>Frise<\/strong> for winter consumption. So as not to waste the heat from the oven, figs, an abundant fruit in Salento, were also dried as a source of food in the cold season.<\/p>\n<p>Around the late 19th century, a variant of the Pajara developed, the <em><strong>\u201cLi\u00e0ma\u201d<\/strong><\/em>. This is still a construction made of dry stone, but rectangular in shape. It was naturally more comfortable and spacious where one could rest on a bed, again made of straw but a real bed. The roof then served to collect rainwater, a treasure that the Salentini knew how to preserve.<\/p>\n<p>Every now and then on the <strong>terraces of the Liame<\/strong> we find <strong>small basins<\/strong> that farmers used to evaporate sea water to form salt. Of stone constructions in Salento, there are not only the pajare, but also the dry stone walls that have a much older history.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Dedda71, CC BY 3.0 &lt;https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons\" href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Favignana_muretto_a_secco.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/4\/49\/Favignana_muretto_a_secco.jpg\/512px-Favignana_muretto_a_secco.jpg\" alt=\"muretti a secco\" width=\"512\" height=\"384\" title=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The use of the wall was manifold, firstly to delimit one&#8217;s property, and secondly, and much more importantly, to <strong>hold back the earth during the winter rains and allow only the water to drain away<\/strong>. Another glimpse of the <strong>old Salento<\/strong> that takes us back to the ancient trades where women, men, old men and children contributed with great effort and dedication to building a country that was destined for oblivion, making do with what little the land had to offer and from the earth to resurrect those products that, with the complicity of the sun, make us savour the goodness of life and the harmony of nature, which at least they have always respected and loved.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/senza-titolo-5-3.jpg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Travelling around Salento and especially in the Salento countryside, we are intrigued by ancient stone constructions with a circular shape: these are the Pajare Salentine; similar to the Trulli of the Itria Valley but with a cut cone. The first constructions date back to the year 1000, but researchers date them much earlier. Pajare Salentine [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_glsr_average":0,"_glsr_ranking":0,"_glsr_reviews":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-culture"],"acf":[],"acfml_non_translatable_locations":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdsalento.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}