MASSERIA LOJAZZO.

History,and stories.

Lojazzo is a jazzo, a stone pen for the flocks of the transhumance, grown into a village: eleven trulli and a masseria, all laid dry. And like Janus it has two faces. One looks back: three thousand years of Messapians, specchie and shepherds, the history held in the stone. The other looks ahead: the stories that have lived here since 2003, brought by those who act, project, play, write and invent here. In Italian, storia is one word for both. Here it is one thing.

Ceglie in Rizzi Zannoni's map of the Terra d'Otranto, 1783
19th centuryIn Rizzi Zannoni's map of 1783, Ceglie sits between Monte Focaro and Monte Scotano. The masseria rises a few decades later, of the same stone as the trulli, laid dry.David Rumsey Map Collection · pubblico dominio
Trullo cones, the dry-laid stone slabs
17th centuryThe trulli: limestone laid dry, without mortar, closed in a dome of overlapping slabs. Here there are eleven, grown around the jazzo, the enclosure where the flocks of the Tratturo delle Vacche stopped for the night. The oldest are three hundred and fifty years old.
Silver didrachm of Taras, 473–460 BC
473 BCTaras and Rhegion march against the Messapians and are routed: for Herodotus, the greatest slaughter of Greeks he knew of. Tradition puts it here, beneath the walls of Kailìa, today Ceglie. This coin was struck by Taras in those same years.Staatliche Münzsammlung München · foto ArchaiOptix, CC BY-SA 4.0
A specchia in the scrub, from above
Twenty-five centuries agoThe specchie: great mounds of dry stone. For more than a century archaeologists have argued over what they were: lookouts within sight of one another, defending the land; tombs, perhaps as large as the standing of whoever was buried there; later, shelter for shepherds. Not to be confused with the heaps left by clearing stones from the fields. Ceglie has the highest concentration of them in Italy, and we don't touch a single one.
The Terra d'Otranto between the two seas, in Magini's map, 1620
Three thousand years agoThe Messapians arrive: independent cities, allied in war, with kings whose names the Greek sources remember. Walls, tombs and inscriptions remain. Kailìa, today Ceglie, is one of the largest: it lies between the two seas, and from its heights, on clear days, you can see both.Bibliothèque nationale de France · pubblico dominio
The dry stone
A hundred million years agoThere was a sea here. The limestone of every stone, from the walls to the trulli, is its seabed.
Lights strung between the trulli, a festival evening
2013Festival nights: theatre, cinema, music and poetry, among the trulli and under the stars.
South Park projected on the masseria's façade, August 2011
2011The masseria's façade becomes a screen. That night, South Park.
Lojazzo VM18, a scene seen through the keyhole
2013Lojazzo VM18: an erotic evening, adults only, to be watched through the keyhole.
Circo MagdaClan on the roof of a trullo, at night
2018Circo MagdaClan plays on the roofs of the trulli. It is the last festival summer.
The Demetra Suite
2021The rooms, designed and built here. From the shape of the courtyard, theHeartAI is born.
theHeartAI at the Royal Library of Rabat, 2024
2024theHeartAI beats at the Royal Library of Rabat and at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven.
theHeartAI in its niche at the Italy Pavilion, Expo Osaka 2025
2025theHeartAI at the Italy Pavilion of Expo Osaka.
The CHORA gallery among the olive trees
2026CHORA, the masseria's art gallery, and Fibonacci Books, its publishing house.
Looking back · History
Looking ahead · Art

Posters, 2005–2023.

“Voglia di Storie”: a split fig, with the “Piazza del Mercato” inside · 2007Bodies with their arteries showing · 2008A child sets fire to a dollar · 2009“Ideas have sex too.” · 2010“Stealing when you're hungry.” · 2011“Kidney for sale” · 2012“Alike, but different.” · 2013“Sentimental Education.” · 2014“Powers that be.” — A Place for Culture and Mankind · 2015“So far, so good.” · 2016“Creativity.” · 2017“[Non-]artificial intelligence” · 2018“Living the most interesting times ever.” · 2023
The Red Balloon, a short shot by drone, 2017
The workshop

Cinema, VR, invisible museums.

At the masseria we have written screenplays, plays and poems, and shot shorts in 3D and virtual reality. One of them, Tender Tinder, was selected for the David di Donatello awards. In 2017 those shorts left the masseria and became Papagna Experience: Italy's first invisible museum, scattered through the streets of Ceglie Messapica, to be found on foot.

Papagna Experience →
Lojazzo's trulli and masseria, all of dry stone
The stone

Three centuries of dry stone.

The trulli came first, around the pen where the flocks of the Tratturo delle Vacche, the transhumance route from Abruzzo to the Salento, stopped for the night: eleven of them, the oldest three hundred and fifty years old. Then, two centuries ago, the masseria. All of the same limestone, much of it laid dry, without mortar: the walls stand by weight and interlock, the domes by overlapping slabs. That limestone is the floor of a sea from a hundred million years ago.

A specchia in the scrub, from above
Mysterious stone structures

Specchie in the scrub.

Great mounds of dry stone, made more than twenty-five centuries ago: lookouts, tombs, shelters? Archaeologists have argued about them for over a century. Ceglie has the highest concentration in Italy, and some lie within the masseria's twenty-four hectares, along the four-kilometre loop you can walk or cycle. We don't touch a single stone.

The search for the specchie →
Memories.
First Thursday of September, 2003–2018.The Bibliotrullo, 2006–2018.The festival audience, 2008.Flamenca, reading and live drawing, 2008.Stars and Myths, 2009.Zaches Teatro, 2011.MLJ Best Of, 2013.Arcadia Sonora Festival, 2014.Wine to Listen To, 2015.Stealing Shakespeare, 2015.Raining Meatballs, 2016.Philosophy Night, 2017.Craft beer, 2017.Circo MagdaClan, 2018.Witches' Night.Dante, 2021.La Poesia s'avvera sempre, 2023.
1 / 17
First Thursday of September, 2003–2018.
The heart-shaped courtyard, from above
The courtyard

A heart, seen from above.

For years we drew it on our posters without knowing. Then one day Nicola opens Google Maps and sees it: the low walls, the trulli and the masseria form a heart.

The heart-shaped courtyard →

Dwell

where stories are invented.

Book