Deep in the baroque heart of Galatina stands a small chapel that once pulsed with rhythm, faith, and mystery: the Chapel of Saint Paul. Within its walls, generations of women sought healing through one of the Mediterranean’s most enigmatic rituals.
This summer, The Secret Explorer interviewed Manola, a former religion teacher who now volunteers in the chapel. She is now on a personal mission to help travelers discover the story of tarantism and pizzica, the cathartic dance believed to have the power to heal the soul.
Manola, chapel volunteer. © Copyright 2024 The Secret Explorer. All rights reserved.
The mystery of the tarantate
For centuries, the tarantate, mostly women, traveled to Galatina on 29th June to ask Saint Paul for a blessing and for healing from what they believed to be the bite of a tarantula, hence the word tarantate. The affliction left them inert, suspended between life and death. Manola explains that the women were often bitten while working in the countryside. When a family realized that their daughter, or sometimes their son, had been affected, they called for the musicians to play tambourines and search for the musical key that would awaken the tarantata. She would lie motionless on a white sheet until the music resonated with her. Only then would she begin to dance, stamping her feet and spinning until sweat poured from her body and she collapsed in exhaustion. This was her release.
The ritual could last from twenty-four to thirty six hours and was always a collective moment: neighbors gathered, families shared food, and everyone contributed to the cost of the musicians. In the 1950s the musicians cost nine thousand lira per day, a sum few families could afford alone, but family and friends’ strong sense of solidarity made it possible.
Tarantism was never considered an illness; it was the cure.
A pilgrimage to St. Paul’s Chapel
The final step toward healing brought the tarantate to the Chapel of Saint Paul. Tradition says that the apostle once passed through Galatina, blessing its waters and promising salvation to anyone who had been bitten by a spider or a serpent. The chapel, once private and now reopened after decades, still bears traces of the tarantate who crawled along both sides of the altar in desperation. Behind the altar was a well, now partially covered, though a section remains visible in the courtyard.
The altar in the chapel. © Copyright 2024 The Secret Explorer. All rights reserved.
Manola leads us there and explains that the water, believed to have been blessed by Saint Paul, had to be drunk and then expelled. “Everyone has experienced that sense of relief you feel after vomiting,” she says. That relief, she explains, mirrored the spiritual cleansing the tarantate sought, regardless of whether their suffering was emotional or physical.
Inside the chapel is a painting of Saint Paul in a red tunic stamping on a snake. Behind him stand two women. Local legend says they were sisters skilled in herbal medicine who lived on the site before the chapel was built. Some people viewed them with suspicion and called them witches, likely misunderstanding their knowledge.
“So the Church brought in the healing power of Saint Paul,” says Manola. “He is shown pointing to the Gospel, a symbol of divine truth triumphing over superstition.” In the background shines the sea of Malta, recalling the passage in the Acts of the Apostles when Paul, bitten by a snake after a shipwreck, emerged unharmed.
Thus Malta and Galatina are linked by a shared miracle, where the serpent becomes not only a symbol of poison and danger but also of faith and transformation.
The painting depicting St.Paul. © Copyright 2024 The Secret Explorer. All rights reserved.
Faith, art, and St. Paul’s legacy
Historical records indicate that none of the tarantate came from Galatina itself. They arrived from surrounding towns, convinced that only this place held the power to heal. The city’s spiritual prestige is also tied to Saint Peter, who according to tradition visited Galatina and traveled northward through Salento. This explains the many towns that bear his name such as San Pietro in Lama, San Pietro in Bevagna, San Pietro Vernotico, to name a few. In the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, visitors can see the stone on which he is said to have sat upon his arrival in Galatina.
From myth to anthropology
In the mid twentieth century, anthropologist Ernesto De Martino arrived in Galatina with a team of psychologists, psychiatrists, and the photographer Franco Pinna, known for his collaborations with Fellini. Their work captured the final decades of tarantism, which had largely disappeared by 1975, though some claim it survived into the 1990s.
De Martino traced the ritual to the Middle Ages and interpreted it as a response to the constraints placed on women in a patriarchal society. It offered them a rare and socially accepted moment of rebellion and emotional release. He called it an existential poison expelled through rhythm, faith, and community.
Later research revealed even older origins. In ancient Sparta, around the seventh century before Christ, women enjoyed unusual freedoms and worshipped Dionysus and Asclepius, gods of ecstasy and healing. When Spartan colonists founded Taranto, they brought these cults with them. The word tarantism comes from Taras, the mythical founder of Taranto, and from the tarantula, the spider that still appears on the city’s coat of arms.
On the other hand, the serpent, central to both Greek and Christian traditions, symbolizes duality. Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, holds a staff with a serpent curled around it, a symbol many pharmacies worldwide still use today. In Greek, the word pharmakos means both poison and remedy, reflecting transformation. The snake, which sheds its skin, is also associated with regeneration, rebirth, and the boundary between the visible and the invisible world.
The heartbeat and its rhythm
Manola says that nothing embodies tarantism more deeply than the tambourine. Once played exclusively by women, its rhythm echoes the heartbeat of mother and child. Its deep tones and bright metallic accents create a harmony of body and spirit.
Photographs from the 1950s show women playing with extraordinary power, the tambourine merging with their bodies as an extension of their strength. “It is the men who mostly play it today, but originally it was a woman’s instrument,” Manola says. “History is rewritten too easily”, she adds. “We have always been told that the south of Italy was poor and backward, but look at our history and our architecture. Making us feel inferior has always been a way to control us and keep us in this state instead of helping us to invest in the beauty of this land and grow richer”, she says.
Healing, then and now
“Once, tarantism was a communal act: when one person suffered, the entire village gathered. Today, we live in a world marked by isolation and individualism”. Manola recalls a conference where a Greek psychiatrist said, “If only tarantism could return today.” The audience was shocked. Why revive something once dismissed as backward? The answer, says Manola, is that tarantism never healed only the body, it healed loneliness and restored connection to rhythm, community, and meaning. It reminds us that true healing requires relationships: with others, with ourselves, and with something greater.
A living tradition
Although the ritual dances are no longer performed, the spirit of tarantism endures. Each summer, La Notte della Taranta, one of the most vibrant music festivals in Europe, honors this heritage and draws hundreds of thousands of people to dance pizzica under the stars of Salento. The 2025 edition featured Grammy nominated clarinetist, soloist, and composer David Krakauer. The festival’s symbol, the tarantula, also appears in the sacred well in the chapel’s courtyard. Manola is always eager to welcome visitors and show them a photograph album filled with real stories of healing.
Meeting Manola, a passionate storyteller deeply connected to her land, led us on a journey through time and through emotions that remain universal. We highly recommend visiting Galatina and its astonishing Basilica of Saint Catherine with its Giottesque frescoes, and experiencing the world of pizzica.
As a final gift, here is a link to one of the most powerful performances from La Notte della Taranta: Giancarlo Paglialunga’s interpretation of Santu Paulu Meu, a prayer to Saint Paul in local dialect. It is a meeting of ancient devotion and modern stagecraft, where healing becomes art beneath Salento’s luminous sky.
