Via Giovanni Michele Laggetto

He was the canon who most distinguished himself for his detailed and faithful description of the events of 1480. The information contained in his chronicle derived largely from his father’s accounts, who was an eyewitness and escaped the massacre only because he was sixteen years old at the time.

His manuscript, entitled “Historia della città di Otranto” -. Come fu presa da’ Turchi e martirizzati i suoi fedeli cittadini,” was discovered in the archive of the metropolitan church on 3 April 1660 and was first published in Maglie in 1924.

In his book, written in 1537, Laggetto recounted how “many lights were seen burning” around the bodies of the Martyrs abandoned on the Hill of Minerva, and that the same lights were visible on the roofs of the Cathedral once the bodies were transferred there. He also narrated that the Ottomans spared no one and that even some children were mortally wounded, while the canons who tried to defend them were all slaughtered.

Some sources identify him as a jurist and historian rather than a canon. In any case, his work remains a fundamental testimony for understanding the history of Otranto and the sacrifice of its inhabitants during the Ottoman invasion.