The actual Historical Center of Cisternino is reborn thanks to the monks basiliani in the Middle Ages, that Cis-sturniums called him/it (to the of here of Sturnium). You first testimony of the Hamlet of Cisternino is given by the discovery, below the Romanesque Church of S. Nicola, of the rests of a small Christian temple, datable around the year 1000. Pope Alessandro III, with a pontifical bead of February 26 th 1180 it assigned this church and the Hamlet of Cisternino to the Bishop of Monopoli.