Gallipoli, the Beautiful City

The Beautiful City of the Greeks

The name says it all: Gallipoli comes from the Greek kalè polis, “beautiful city,” and has lived up to that promise for more than two thousand years. On this tour, we’ll take the students on a journey to discover a city with two distinct parts: on one side, the new town on the mainland; on the other, the old town—an entire island connected by a 17th-century bridge, where every alley leads to the sea.

It is precisely this geography that makes Gallipoli a perfect classroom: as you walk, you come to understand how a coastal city is born, defended, and sustained. The walls that surround it, the castle that once controlled access to it, the port that for centuries exported Salento’s olive oil to half of Europe: every stone tells a story of the Mediterranean’s economy and history.

A tour designed by teachers

Like all our field trips, this isn’t just a walk with dates and names to remember: it’s a journey designed by students. In Gallipoli, the students observe the city as a living organism—because of the island, because of the walls, because of the churches overlooking the water—and learn to read the traces that history leaves behind in the landscape.

Then there’s the human side of the city: the fishermen’s village, with its colorful boats moored beneath the walls and the fish market, and the traces of the olive oil culture in the underground oil mills carved into the rock beneath the old town, where for centuries the lampante oil that illuminated the capitals of Europe was produced.

The tour is tailored to the age and interests of the group—from middle schoolers to college and international groups—and for foreign groups, it is also conducted in English. There’s plenty of time to get lost in the narrow streets: because, after all, a beautiful city is best experienced by simply looking around.