Searching for ancestors in Taranto, Puglia

Cemeteries, nun's breasts, scampi, flea markets and addresses too!

We closed the enoteca for a few days, dropped the kids at their nonna’s and jumped on a plane to Puglia (though I wish I had taken the train… more on that later) with the main goal of going to a cemetery. I don’t know why I hadn’t tried this last time I got stuck with a dead end as I was researching what happened to my in laws’ family — the truth is I had thought of it but I was daunted by the idea of going row by row through a cemetery the size of a small town scanning the names and dates for ones that I recognised.

I started this research about 15-16 years ago, not long after my father in law died. I’ve always been interested in my family tree, discovering roots, writing them down. I took over my grandmother Rose’s own family tree when I lived in Melbourne. I’d visit the State Library to have access to things like immigration, Census and ancestry records and try to fill in the gaps.

She had a style that I have always loved and appreciated — a true feminist, she only recorded the maternal tree. Her family tree sloped diagonally as she mapped out the women in the family, their names and where they came from, who their mothers were. Her family tree was not a Davies family tree, it wasn’t even an Archdeacon family tree, but it was Bell, Smithers, Russell, Clarke, full of different surnames, it was a fully female one.

I have always wondered how my grandmother had accomplished so much research in the 1980s without the internet. I knew she took a trip to the UK and had visited cemeteries. I myself had visited the cemetery of Sutton Forest in New South Wales to note down a poem on my great-great-great grandmother’s tombstone that hinted that she may have had long illness. There are lots of clues to be found in what is left behind by those who loved and buried their family members.

So, picking up on the extensive research I did while I was writing my third cookbook Tortellini at Midnight that details my in law’s family history from Taranto, Puglia, to Turin in Piedmont to Tuscany, I came across something that didn’t exist until now: Taranto’s council made a tomb search tool where you can digitally search the cemeteries in the city and get a QR code that takes you to a map and images of the area where you can find them. I immediately searched for “Calianno”, the surname of Marco’s great grandmother — also known as Nonna Anna, who is best known for her polpette and for leaving her wealthy family to run away with the postman (here is her polpette recipe and the love story for those who haven’t heard it already!). There was just one: Clementina Calianno, Anna’s sister.

Here’s more on how to search for your Italian ancestors.

I have always wondered what happened to the rest of the Calianno family. The story in the family is that they were nobility and part of my research is really to discover if this was true and if so who were there and why are there no traces of them left. The island of old Taranto was full of wealthy and noble families until the end of the 1800s, early 1900s and then many of the upper class began to leave the island for the new Taranto on the mainland, leaving the old town and its labyrinth of narrow streets to the fishermen and poorer families. It’s mostly crumbling now — windows and doors are boarded up, plants growing out of the buildings, a shell of what it used to be. From a bustling, elegant, ancient city of 25,000 there are now less than 3,000 inhabitants.

It’s quite extraordinary that we came this far because of the tomb search, but I realised when we arrived at the cemetery that you can only go so far with that map. What we discovered when we got there was chapel upon chapel with crypts that steeply disappear underground. Many of them were unaccessible, not to mention covered in cobwebs and heavy doors guarded by many, many cats (they do say they are the guardians of the underworld, right?). It was also one hundred percent creepy so if you are a sensitive person, bring someone with you so you don’t have to do this alone!

There was a private chapel that struck me as I had happened to have seen the surname in my most recent research. “Heirs of Vincenzo Ferretti” was written in large letters across the top of the chapel and an out of place glass door had been placed at the top of the crypt, locked. Through the cobweb covered window all I could see was a votive and some fake flowers, dulled to a shade of grey. Clementina must be down there, I thought, but there was no way to really know. Vincenzo Ferretti would have been her great-grandfather, my children’s great-great-great-great-great grandfather. But I wasn’t positive and I wanted to know how we could get inside. Maybe there were names and dates inscribed on those dusty tombs that would answers some questions.

At the front of the cemetery there was an office and a loud speaker blaring Enya, which somehow seemed fitting, and we managed to find someone behind a computer. I was suddenly glad we had arrived before lunch hour. He checked his watch when we interrupted him but was obliging. He typed into his computer.

Ah yes, in that chapel there is also Melucci Maria, Colucci Amelia and Diego, Augusto and Alfredo, he said.

Names I had never heard of before, I quickly noted them down in my phone to search for them later in the State Archive family history search engine. But then he told us that no one had accessed that chapel since 1977, when Clementina was buried (no one was left to mourn her, I noted, sadly). And because it was abandoned, the council had plans to remove the tombs and all the remains and sell the chapel off to a new family (20,000 euro in case you’re wondering how much these things go for).

It was a bit of a blow to know we were so close to getting inside, but I felt like we had just been given five new pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that had been lost. Five names that somehow fit into the story.

Later, after a generous lunch of mussels (Taranto’s specialty) and scampi at our favourite fishmonger-trattoria (see the guide down below for details, the photo above is the paccheri with scampi), I went down a rabbit hole on the archive search engine and I found them all. I found their parents’ names, a marriage, some illegitimate children, their jobs — lawyers, surgeons, farmacists, landowners (this side of the family were certainly wealthy, no wonder they couldn’t forgive Nonna Anna for running away with a postman) and even their addresses, including one well known palazzo, Palazzo de Blasi, the address of Vincenzo Ferretti.

My imagination went wild. On paper you could see which branches of the family lived with each other, cousins that grew up very close together and even shared similar names. I had more questions though, specifically how the Coluccis made their way into that private chapel, and how did they come to live in Palazzo de Blasi (there is a Blasi/Colucci palazzo in nearby Martina Franca too, I need to make another trip to see that one). More and more it seemed to me that it wasn’t the Calianno family that was running things, but the Ferrettis, and specifically, Vincenzo Ferretti, the granddaddy of them all.

Slowly the pieces of the puzzle seemed to click into place but with the State Archive search you can only get so far — there are only records available from the years 1809-1899. So, as a last attempt, we paid a visit to the Archives in Taranto as well and tried to get some answers there.

Are you’re looking for an inheritance? Asked the secretary when she asked what we needed this research for. No, I just want to write a story about it.

I was handed a tiny scrap of paper and asked to write down the names of those who I needed to find. They won’t all fit on this piece of paper, I thought to myself. But it was a start. Now we wait.

Have you tried searching for your ancestors (in cemeteries or online?!)? Do you have any questions about doing it in Italy?

Italian Family History Book Recommendations

I’m in the middle of reading a beautiful book right now (recommended by someone here!) that is inspired by the author’s family story, tracing her grandparents from the Italian Alps to New Jersey, The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani. And thanks to another recommendation by this community I also discovered The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza, a family saga which is inspired by the mysterious death of her great-great grandmother in Sicily. I can’t wait to read that one.

Taranto Address Book

In between hunting down old family members, we visited some old favourites, some friends, went to an amazing flea market and ate so well:

• We flew into Brindisi airport and rented a car (a must if you want to get around easily in Puglia. Europcar were so nice, I have to say, our late flight was delayed by 2 hours and they waited for us to arrive at nearly midnight!).

• We stayed at Masseria Potenti, an absolutely dreamy and gorgeous structure (above) about 40 minutes south of Taranto’s old city, 10 minutes from Manduria. The rooms are so romantic, the breakfast and food here is generous. Every corner is a delight. Here’s a blog post with plenty of photos from a workshop I hosted there with Alice Adams and Saghar Setareh back in 2017. It’s just as beautiful as it was then and the restaurant is wonderful too. Perhaps it’s time to plan another workshop there.

• At the Masseria I met also with Antonella from Cala Molinella in Puglia’s Gargano peninsula to talk about upcoming class in mid June for her Puglia Food Week program! There are still spaces if you are interested, email her for info.

• In Taranto we ate at the Trattoria del Pescatore da Murianni in Piazza Fontana, an old favourite that we always like to pay a visit to for the incredibly fresh seafood and insanely generous, delicious portions of pasta. As a fishmonger, they have super fresh fish and the thing that you should try here is their raw shellfish — a centuries old specialty of Taranto. You won’t get to taste anything like this elsewhere. It’s also ridiculously cheap: our meal of raw scampi and prawns, raw shellfish and generous seafood pasta, wine, water, coffee and sgroppino each came to 25 euro per person.

• The thing that I haven’t stopped thinking about that we ate on this trip are the tette di monache (literally, “nun’s tits”!) from the elegant Baroné pastry shop right in front of the Castello. They are incredibly soft, cloud like pastries filled with cream. My favourite pastry shop in southern Tuscany in Orbetello, Ferrini, does them too and any trip I make there I come back with a tray of these. I am determined to try to recreate them!

• Julie Ann Marr does wonderful cooking classes at her home in Oria and their cooking studio in Altamura. We got to spend some quality time together on this trip (keep your eyes peeled for her upcoming cookbook) and she took me to a fantastic flea market in Cisternino (3rd Sunday of every month, below), where I basically cried because we couldn’t bring anything else on the plane (hence why next trip will be with a spare suitcase and a high speed train ride to/from Bari).

• Fornelli pronti in Cisternino are still a favourite — butcher shops where you choose from the counter at the front then sit down and wait for it to be cooked in the wood fired ovens. They have sides (the best buttery potatoes, skins on, cooked on a spit) and pasta and other things too but we usually go for things out of the meat counter like bombette (involtini stuffed with cheese and ham and crumbed (here’s a recipe and write up about Cisternino from my blog from 2011, honestly not a lot has changed! If anything it’s become more lively, lots of very curated shops and food spots). We like Zio Pietro and Al Vecchio Fornello, which is where we went this trip after flea marketing.

Here’s a guide to the area in the summer (2022) an older guide (2021) on the old city of Taranto: