Among Other Local Curiosities, He Pointed Out The Portal Of The Parish Church, A Fine But Dilapidated Piece Of Work, With A Large Rosette Window Overhead.

The town, he told me, derives its name from certain large grottoes wherein the inhabitants used to take refuge during Saracen raids.

This I already knew, from the pages of Swinburne and Sanchez; and in my turn was able to inform him that a certain Frenchman, Bertaux by name, had written about the Byzantine wall-paintings within these caves. Yes, those old Greeks! he said. And that accounted for the famous ceramics of the place, which preserved the Hellenic traditions in extraordinary purity. I did not inform him that Hector Preconi, who purposely visited Grottaglie to study these potteries, was considerably disappointed.

At the door of the decayed convent my guide left me, with sundry polite expressions of esteem. I entered a spacious open courtyard; a well stood in the centre of a bare enclosure whereon, in olden days, the monks may have cultivated their fruit and vegetables; round this court there ran an arched passage, its walls adorned with frescoes, now dim and faded, depicting sacred subjects. The monastery itself was a sombre maze of stairways and cells and corridors - all the free spaces, including the very roof, encumbered with gleaming potteries of every shape and size, that are made somewhere near the premises.

I wandered about this sunless and cobwebby labyrinth, the old woman pensioners flitting round me like bats in the twilight.

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