The center of daily life, the ancient square, which had never been dedicated to anyone because for everyone it was just and simply "minz a Chiazz" in the middle of the square, had become, immediately after the feat of the Thousand, Piazza del Plebiscito. The plebiscite was held here too with the same plebiscite results (2792 YES and no NO).


This was once the real center of city life! Beginning at 5 in the morning, when an old sacristan woke up at the first light of dawn, slipped into a small door to the right of the entrance of the Mother Church of San Pietro which leads into the bell tower and began to ring "a campan", the alarm clock for the whole village, the beginning of a new day of work!


Before him only the old baker of the Forno Grande in via Mulini, just five meters from the square, was already at work with an iron hook mounted on a very long wooden rod to insert wood and branches into the oven that the diligent "sarcinari" they had unloaded on the floor the night before, taking them from the woods of the Monti di Gioia or Barsento! And he had to hurry to bring that oven that was his damnation up to temperature, because soon the first boards or the first "f'zzator" would arrive on the head of fast boys, "i uagnun", who putting a " onion "made of skilfully packaged rags, they collected the bread from the surrounding houses where many women already standing by four in the morning had arranged the seven or eight loaves, the bread for a whole week for the whole of their family, which they had packed using only the strength of the arms to "fuck" the very simple dough of flour, water, salt and yeast-mother, "u l'vat" preserved "nto step" in a cup as a legacy of the previous week's processing!


The old oven has not been in operation for many years now! It was built by that well-deserving Bailiff Giovanni Battista Carafa who was responsible for the rebirth and definitive take-off of our village at the end of the 15th century. was Priore, his excellent architect Angelo to give a sprinkling of urban planning and some news:


First of all, a large oven in via Mulini (a true precursor of Km 0) and a butcher's shop right next to the adjacent well (the Chianca), for the convenience of the population; and above the oven the headquarters of the University with sufficient space for the offices of the Mayor and the decurions, the chamberlain, the judge and the notary and also for the archive in which to keep the few papers worthy of memory! And then a large and imposing wall, eccentric compared to the oldest urban nucleus but designed specifically to follow the contours of the land and to remain elevated compared to the gardens and vineyards that surrounded it. Only two doors, to be kept closed at night always and also on the not unusual occasion of hungry gangs of freebooters looking for easy booty arrive here!


And then a new large church to replace the ancient temple already dedicated to St. Peter the Apostle in memory of his passage here almost at the beginning of his journey started in Brindisi in the direction of the capital of the Empire, Rome and consecrated as early as 1158 ! The diligent architect Angelo saw that the old temple had become too narrow for the needs of a population by now in constant growth and transformed it into a large church, with the entrance no longer on the small piazzetta del Palmento, but on a large square to be built. where the vineyards still stood and which over the years and centuries to come would become the pulsating center of city life! And as a perennial reminder of what he had done, he left right under the majestic rose window carved in the hard local stone, between the University coat of arms on the left and that of the client G.B. Carafa on the right, a plaque in perpetual and everlasting memory of the work done!