The civic coat of arms of Alezio has a phoenix on a blue background and Greek inscription that means “Alexias”, the name of the village in the 4^th century B.C. The village grew always bigger and bigger and became a rich town as we can understand for the archaeological findings of this area. Alezio was a flourishing town in the Roman period since it had about 70 thousand inhabitants. The Roman name of the town was Aletium and it was on the Via Traiana which went from the Salento to Rome. We find the name of Aletium in the books by Plinio the Old and by Tolomeus. The legend says that St Peter passed from Alezio and baptized the whole population with the water of a well that still exists today. When the Roman Empire fell down nothing could protect the Salento from the barbarian invasions and so the Saracens came in the 10^th century and razed Alezio to the ground. Those who survived had to move to the near villages leaving Alezio as a ghost town. In the Angevin period there was a small village called ‘Villa Picciotti’ in this area and was ruled by Gallipoli. This village was named after Francisco Alemanno whose nickname was ‘picciotto’. He was a rich landowner who gave some land to the farmers for them to cultivate it or build their house. Until 1854 Alezio was under the administration of Gallipolis and the King Vittorio Emanuele II chose to change the name of the village. Among the native people of Alezio we remember : the abbot De Simone who taught Arabian at University and Mr Tafuri who took his degree in a very short time then became an appreciated and famous lawyer. Enrico Giannelli lived in the 19^th century and studied in the Istituto delle Belle Arti in Naples. He was a great painter and his works are showed in Naples, Moscow, New York and London. Mateo Perez was born in 1547 and moved to Rome in 1566 where he became a famous and appreciated painter. He took part to the painting of the Cappella Sistina and worked for pope Pio V and Gregorio XIII. Later he moved to Malta. In 1616 he died in Lima, Peru.