Brindisi (Brinnisi in brindisi) is an Italian town of 85 881 inhabitants, the capital of the province of the same name in Apulia. One of the most populous centers of Salento, in Apulia, the city plays an important commercial and cultural role, due to its fortunate position towards the East and its natural harbor on the Adriatic Sea. It was the provisional seat of government in the Kingdom of Italy from 1943 to 1944.
Brindisi stands on a natural harbor, an inlet that is wedged
deeply into the Adriatic coast of Apulia. Inside the outermost arms
of the port are the Pedagne islands, a tiny archipelago currently
not open to visitors because it was used for military purposes (UN
Schools Group, base built at the time of the intervention in
Bosnia).
Presenting a flat land morphology, the entire
municipal territory falls within the Brindisi plain and is
characterized by the high agricultural vocation of its land. It is
located in the north-eastern part of the Salento plain, about 40 km
from the Itria valley and therefore from the first offshoots of the
lower Murge. Not far from the city is the Torre Guaceto state nature
reserve. The Ionian Sea is, however, about 45 km away. The municipal
area includes the hamlet of Tuturano, about 10 km away from the
capital.
The northern municipal area is washed by the main
watercourse of Salento, the Canale Reale, which flows into Torre
Guaceto.
The Brindisi area is characterized by a large sub-flat area from which calcarenite and sandy deposits of marine origin emerge; which in turn have a deeper clayey level of the lower Pleistocene, and a still subsequent carbonate one composed of Mesozoic limestones and soils of the sedimentary cycle of the Fossa bradanica. The development of agriculture, especially intensive, has caused an increase in the use of water resources, but entailed an indiscriminate increase in uses.
Based
on the 30-year reference averages (1961-1990), the average
temperature of the coldest month, January, is around +9.6 ° C, while
that of the hottest month, August, is around +25 with peaks which
can even reach + 35-40 ° C. Average annual rainfall, less than 600
mm, has a minimum in spring-summer and a peak in autumn-winter.
Origins of the name
The town toponym derives from the Latin
Brundisium, in turn derived, through the ancient Greek Brentesion,
from the Messapian Brention, translatable into "deer head" (see the
phylogenetic connection to the Albanian bri, brî - pl. Brirë, brinë,
that is " horn "," ramification ", from the Proto-Albanian * brina,
* brena), thus referring to the characteristic shape of its port,
which seems to recall the shape of the animal's head.