“Il tacco illustrato” is our most ambitious challenge: 52 issues, 52 cities, an illustrated journey through Puglia that, week after week, will take shape until it becomes a real book.
To understand the origin of the name of the town of Santa Maria di Leuca, we need to break it down into two parts. The first part refers to devotion to the Virgin Mary: it is said that during the 16th century, she saved shipwrecked sailors from a terrible storm (the latter was the connection that inspired me to design the Illustrated Heel. But we'll get to that later).
The second part, on the other hand, almost certainly derives from the Greek Leukós, meaning “white”. The Greeks chose this name when they first landed and saw the white cliffs plunging into the sea. Among the inhabitants, the legend of the mermaid Leucàsia, who lived where the Adriatic and Ionian Seas meet off the coast of Salento, still echoes today.
The mermaid, with her golden hair and white skin, tried to seduce the shepherd Melisso with her song. He, however, was in love with the young Arìstula and rejected her.
Blinded by rage, Leucàsia waved her tail, unleashing a storm that swept away the two young lovers, drowning their bodies and carrying them to opposite sides of the bay, just like the two seas that never meet.
The goddess Minerva decided to turn them to stone: Arìstula became Punta Ristola (on the left), Melisso became Punta Meliso (on the right). The two ends still seem to embrace each other without touching.
The siren was also punished by being transformed into the white city of Leuca, located between the two points, between the couple.
A dualism that often recurs.
Cause and consequence of the storm. Sacred and profane.
This gave rise to the idea of combining two stories, probably never happened and never verified, which meet at the southernmost point of Italy, where the land ends and gives way to the sea: Finibus Terrae.
To conclude the long journey of ‘Il Tacco Illustrato’ we couldn't just draw. We had to listen.
We travelled down to Santa Maria di Leuca, Finibus Terrae, the exact point where Italy melts into the Mediterranean. Here, geography is inextricably intertwined with myth.
Tales of a mermaid.
We asked the locals to tell us this story. Because if the cliff is the physical memory of an ancient pain, the voice of the inhabitants is the soul that keeps it alive.
Between the sacred and the profane, here is the last stop on our journey.