Otranto

   Coastal city in southernmost Apulia (q.v.), located on the strait ofOtranto where the Ionian Sea meets the Adriatic Sea (qq.v.). It served as an entrance to Italy (q.v.), and a place to cross to Avlon in Epiros (q.v.). Belisarios (q.v.) landed troops there in 544 during the war with the Ostrogoths (q.v.). The Lombards (q.v.) seized it in the early eighth century, but it was recaptured by Byzantine forces in 758. The Normans under Robert Guiscard (qq.v.) conquered it in 1068. The city's most famous medieval citizen was writer and diplomat Nicholas of Otranto. The cross-in-square church (q.v.) of St. Pietro stands today as a reminder of Otranto's long Byzantine occupation.