The group led by Stefano Boeri Architetti, together with the professionals Luigi Gallo, Sergio Saracino, Doris Assunta Ria, Seti Engineering srl, and Studio Silva srl, has won the competition for the urban regeneration of Via Riviera degli Haethey in Otranto.
The entire program was launched by the Minister for the South and Territorial Cohesion as part of the “CIS Brindisi-Lecce-Costa Adriatica,” which aims to redevelop and revitalize the Adriatic coast of Salento.
For decades considered a marginal and peripheral area, this coastal strip still bore the marks of a difficult past: the public housing built in the 1950s—whose assigned residents often gave up their allocation due to the distance from the town center—told the story of a territory on the city’s fringes. The redevelopment of the Madonna dell’Altomare cliff has radically changed the area’s fate, transforming it into one of the main commercial and tourist hubs of Salento.
The project includes securing the cliff and redeveloping the entire coastal strip—currently used for car parking—into a continuous panoramic promenade. The route will extend from the small square of Madonna dell’Altomare to the Scoglio del Picciurillo, then passing by the old Customs House and the Customs Officers’ House, the Spanish Fort, and the White Lighthouse, and ending at Porto Craulo. A sequence of historic sites and sea views finally connected by a unified axis, restoring to the city a waterfront worthy of its extraordinary identity.