Lecce
Historic Centre Of The Lecce Baroque, Worked In The Local Pietra Leccese Limestone, Built Over The Roman Town Of Lupiae · Lecce, Puglia
Lecce is what happens when a soft golden limestone meets a century of money and a local school of carvers with nothing to restrain them. The stone here cuts almost like wood when it comes out of the ground and hardens in the air, so the seventeenth-century facades are worked into fruit, beasts, saints and pure ornament to a density that has no parallel anywhere else in Italy. The Basilica of Santa Croce is the extreme case and people stand in front of it arguing about whether it is magnificent or absurd. Underneath all this sits a Roman town that keeps surfacing: an amphitheatre half excavated in the middle of the main square, a theatre a few streets away, a column carrying the patron saint at the end of the old Appian Way. It is far enough down the heel of Italy that most visitors never get here, which is why the whole baroque centre is still a place people live in rather than a set. Nothing here is ticketed that does not have to be, and the best of it is the walk itself.
Piazza del Duomo, Lecce, Puglia, 73100, Italy
ALL TIMES UNVERIFIED FOR THIS ROW. Broadly: the churches on the combined ticket open daily with a long early-afternoon interval and shorter winter hours, and close without notice for services. The bell tower keeps the same hours as the cathedral complex. The Roman amphitheatre is visible from the square at any time; access down into it has been restricted for long periods. Shops and workshops close for several hours in the early afternoon, longer in summer. Streets and squares never close. Confirm before travelling.