Of fundamental importance for the history of Diso is the discovery of the stone with messapic inscription since it determines the messapic origin of the name  Diso  from Dizo  fortified city. These findings confirm the existence of Diso as early as the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, giving us the certainty of a  messapian Diso. (The origin of the Messapians is uncertain, probably due to uncertain migration flows and never clearly proven of Illyrian or Aegean-Anatolian origin came to Puglia at the threshold of the Iron Age around the IX century BC. [1] The hypothesis Illyrian, today the most widely accepted by scholars, is supported primarily from considerations of a linguistic kind ) (wikipedia)

Around the year 1000, Diso has tied for many centuries its vicissitudes with the nearby Castro becoming first a fraction of it, (from the 1085 time in which Castro become County until the time of the Turkish raids in 1537), and then becoming a municipality aside from 1806 until 1977.

After the downfall of Castro because of the Turkish raids, Diso in 1600 became the most important center in the County since it was the most populated and also the best topographically located.
Throughout the seventeenth century Diso had a great building expansion and a marked increase in population, and although totally devoid of artisans, (the population was exclusively devoted to agriculture), there was the practice of many professionals (notaries and doctors) and, worthy of mention, there was at that time a hospital of which, still today, the activities practiced are ignored.

The year 1700 began for Diso with a severe economic crisis either due to the advent of the Austrian Government (1714) and the shortage in agricultural production. All this, however, did not discourage the few remaining who in 1715 bought the two wooden statues of Sts Apostles Philip and James, still venerated today. In 1758 they built a new church dedicated to them giving rise to an economic, professional and cultural rebirth, (with the opening of mills, oil mills, with the start of craft and medical studies) as well as religious with the period of greatest splendor for the local Convent of the Capuchin Friars.

After this period of splendor in the early nineteenth century, the Capuchin Monastery was closed marking an instantaneous stop of the thriving religious activity which occured up to that time.

[www.comunediso.it]