Santa Maria di Leuca

At the very tip of the Salento peninsula, the small city of Santa Maria di Leuca.  The Salento is essentially fairly flat, except for the coastline.  Leuca appears to be mainly a resort area, and I expect it is much more of a bustling place in July and August than it was in early May.  In the foreground of the photo below is the end of the Apulian aqueduct.  Mussolini ordered the construction of this dramatic waterfall to commemorate the terminus of the project; it was finished in 1940.

The lighthouse, built in 1864.  Leuca is the point at which, on the Italian side, the Adriatic Sea meets the Ionian Sea.  (In Albania it's close to Vlore.) 

Somewhere out in this direction, if weather conditions were right (they weren't this day; we were inundated by a huge thunderstorm about five minutes after I took this picture) one could probably see where the seas meet.

The Basilica Santuario Santa Maria De Finibus Terrae (the end of the earth), built in the first half of the 18th Century.  As in much of southern Europe, the Italian coastline was subject to slave-taking raids by Barbary pirates, and this particular location was no exception.  Now that I'm living in Algiers, it's odd how many European Mediterranean coastline cities reflect the continued threat of pirates:  other than fortresses, there aren't a lot of old (by European standards) structures.  St. Peter supposedly came through Leuca on his way to Rome.

Leuca built up as a sort of patrician resort town in the early 1900s; these are some of the houses remaining.  Some were for sale, for probably a few million Euros.  But they'd be a good retirement project -- lots of renovation work.