| The so called "Rupestral Culture" is the set of complex and diverse social and cultural realities, civil and religious, related to the experience of living in caves, which have affected the Sixth to the Thirteenth century the whole of Southern Italy, continental and insular. In cave-dwellings and cave-churches we find a extensive documentation concerning the life, religious values, social organization, construction techniques and the artistic expressions of the Middle Ages in Apulia.
The environmental conditions have in fact resulted in a different way to invent and create a built form, using specific structural layouts. In this adaptation to specific environmental conditions is gathered, on the one hand, the originality and specificity of the solutions adopted, on the other hand, the cultural continuity that characterizes urban schemes, configuration spaces, art forms.
The rupestral phenomenon in the medieval period is of particular importance, with two distinct periods of maximum development: the first is placed in the first half of the 10th century, during the second Byzantine colonization, and the second between the end of the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, during the Norman and Swabian period.
The most important room of all the rock settlement is the church.
The typology of churches varies widely from the square shape with the addition of an apse and some niches (especially typical of the more archaic solutions, referring to the IX - XI century), up to very complex plans, in which the squares are transformed into trapezoids isosceles, and whose overall effect is the characteristic fan-shaped device for better light diffusion.
The influence of Byzantium is also notable sacred iconography, even many centuries after the expulsion of the Byzantines from Puglia. The icons of saints and devotional subjects typical of the Eastern tradition as the Christ Pantocrator, the Deesis, the Virgin and Child, are widespread.
The ravines are natural formations from the unusual and unique features that characterize the landscape and morphology of the Ionian Province. In the Province of Taranto, Brindisi, Lecce and Bari ravines are over three hundred, only the Province of Taranto includes more than one hundred and fifty.
The "gravine" (ravines) are formed at the step topography that, from the 400 meter high plateau Murgia, leads to 50 to 100 meters where the coastline begins. All along the perimeter of the Murgia plateau valleys more or less parallel to the branch to the Adriatic and Ionian Sea. They are characterized by a milder slope towards the Adriatic coast (and are called "lame"), the steepest and deepest on the Ionian coast ("gravine").
The Municipality of Grottaglie is located at the southern end of the large area characterized by the phenomenon of "living in caves."
The ravine Riggio is on the northwest side of town. It is a deep incision which extends, with sinuous north - south for about one kilometer.
In it, the excavations have found some burial caves, attributable to a period between the Eneolithic, the Bronze Age and Iron Age.
Some graves dug by the side of the ravine are instead related to a permanent settlement which developed between the 6th and 4th centuries BC
The origin of the rock village should refer to the medieval period no earlier than the 10th century, on the basis of the dating of the frescoes in the churches. According to tradition, the rock house was abandoned in 1297, when the Duke of Calabria authorized the Archbishop of Taranto to bring together the inhabitants of different rupestral settlements within the center of Grottaglie, for safety reasons but also probably for reasons tax.
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