Specchia dei Mori

The Specchia dei Mori in Martano is located along a road which connects the town to Martignano, just 1 km away from the town centre. Nowadays it looks like an impressive mound of stones, a series of overlapping limestone slabs, almost 6 metres high, with a diameter of 15 metres and a fig tree in the middle, on the highest point of the area.

According to an hypothesis, it was used as lookout. The inhabitants of Martano used to name this strange building “secla tu demonìu” (“specchia of the devil”, in the grika, old Greek, language) and there are several legends which refer to it. One of these, tells that the ancient inhabitants, the Moors, built a very high tower to reach God, but they were crushed by its collapse. There is another legend connected to this fact: the devil put inside the huge mound of stones a mother hen with golden chicks.