VISIT PADULI is an app in Augmented Reality that, in a "game-like" way, will guide you through the discovery of more than 300 assets classified as botanical, architectonical, geological and anthropological. You will be able to explore freely an intricate labyrinth of rural roads and the park will become the place where, through the apps narrative, you will uncover a complex and mysterious environment, a true open-air museum.
Parco Paduli is located in the heart of Salento, an area in the Italian province of Lecce.
This specific zone is referred to as the Terre di Mezzo (the land in the middle) due to its equal distance from the Ionian and Adriatic seas.
In this landscape that has changed and evolved over the millennia, the park offers a vast expanse of olive groves and woodlands consisting of plots divided by dry stone walls and dotted with trees and shrubs, such as the typical Mediterranean maquis. This is the perfect home for birds of prey and other birds, large and small mammals, reptiles and amphibians. Originally, this was swampland, or in Italian palude, from which Parco Paduli took its name. Traces of this past are still visible today in the ponds, temporary lakes and numerous artificial waterways that criss-cross the wetlands before flowing into the vore, actual natural sinkholes, typical of the karst (porous rocks) topography of this region. The park features megalithic stone monuments such as dolmens and menhirs. There are churches built from rocks, archaeological sites, farms, underground oil mills, hunting lodges and many small stone shelters.
This is proof plenty, along with the natural beauty and anthropological aspects, from country festivals to fairs and markets, of the park’s rich cultural heritage and identity.