Castrignano de' Greci ( Griko: , ''Kascignàna''; Salentino: ) is a small town and ''

comune A (; : , ) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions () and provinces (). The can also have the City status in Italy, titl ...

'' of 4,107 inhabitants in the province of Lecce in

Apulia Apulia ( ), also known by its Italian language, Italian name Puglia (), is a Regions of Italy, region of Italy, located in the Southern Italy, southern peninsular section of the country, bordering the Adriatic Sea to the east, the Strait of Ot ...

, southern

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

. It is one of the nine towns of

Grecìa Salentina Grecìa Salentina (Griko for "Salento, Salentine Greece") is an area in the peninsula of Salento in southern Italy, near the town of Lecce which is inhabited by the Griko people, an ethnic Greek people, Greek minority in southern Italy who spea ...

. The inhabitants of Castrignano, alongside Italian, also speak Griko which reveals significant Greek influences over the course of time, presumably from the time of the Byzantine control, or even the ancient

Magna Graecia Magna Graecia refers to the Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy, encompassing the modern Regions of Italy, Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Sicily. These regions were Greek colonisation, extensively settled by G ...

colonisation in the 8th century BCE.

References

Cities and towns in Apulia Grecìa Salentina Localities of Salento {{Puglia-geo-stub