Today was our day for a walking tour of Lecce, and initially we had not been hopeful about the weather. However, it had rained heavily in the night, with lots of thunder and lightning (the latter killing off the hotel's air conditioning) and it was dry by morning, though cloudy. So we hoped for the best, and I took my raincoat. Paul had decided not to bring a raincoat on holiday at all, for reasons best known to himself.
The town of Lecce is more than 2,000 years old, and was founded by people from the eastern Adriatic. As well as remains from every age since then, it has an abundance of Baroque architecture which would make it one of Italy's most visited cities if it weren't quite so far away from the centre. Apparently the local limestone is described as butter-soft and easy to carve into intricate and detailed embellishments for the many churches and palaces, and it hardens on contact with the air. Everywhere you walk in the city, you can look up to see carvings of angels, human faces, animals, plants, and fanciful curlicues - supporting balconies, surrounding doorways and windows, and decorating the capitals of columns. It was a 15 minute walk into the main square and the historic centre, and once there, we first looked at the Roman amphitheatre.
You can see that it's currently in use, though not tonight, apparently. It was built in the second century AD and held more than 25,000 spectators - though the population of the town in Roman times was only 6000! In the Middle Ages it went out of use and was buried under what became the Piazza Sant'Oronzo, the town's main square. It was discovered again in 1929 during excavations for the building of a bank and has since been partially excavated. More of it remains buried under adjacent buildings, so it is no longer a complete oval. However, the seating tiers and part of the floor that have been uncovered are now open and used for concerts and other performances in the summer.
Just behind the amphitheatre in my photo you can see a loggia called the Palazzo de Sedile - Sedile meaning seat or bench. It was built in 1592 to accommodate the local government, and was open at the sides so the governors could be seen governing. To the right of that, you can see a column topped by a statue of the city's patron saint, Saint Oronzo, who is credited with saving the region from the plague. He was an early Christian who was beheaded by the Romans for refusing to worship pagan gods, and he appeared in a vision to the local bishop during the plague in the 17th century, which stopped all plague in the area. The column under the statue is actually Roman, and came from the city of Brindisi whose citizens donated it because they were so grateful that they too had been saved from the plague.
As well as palaces, Lecce is full of churches as there were so many different monastic orders here, and so I photographed quite a few. However, photography in the streets was not easy because, just after we had left the amphitheatre, the heavens opened and a wall of water descended from the sky. The streets were soon ankle deep in running water - and we had no umbrella. We were obliged to buy 2 cheap umbrellas, and even so, we got very wet indeed. So we saw the insides of many more churches than we intended, as we took shelter from time to time. This is the reason for few outdoor photos - they could only be taken in the brief breaks from the heavy rain.
We hurried into the nearest church, which was full of niches encrusted with baroque ornament. The guide asked us to guess what the ornaments were made of, and we guessed stone, plaster and wood. But we were all wrong, it was made of papier-mâché. I did take photos, but without flash, so they aren't very good. However, I took similar photos in the Duomo where we went next
The ornamentation here was carved stone, but I think you can see what I mean by describing it as encrustations! There was a wedding being held here, amidst all the damp tourists listening to guides in several different languages. The bride was late because of the rain, and her bridesmaids were even later. It must have been quite difficult for women wearing long dresses because the piazza outside was under several inches of water
We went into St Irene's church, where I was told off for taking pictures, then, as the rain had lessened a bit, we went to look at the Roman theatre.
Like the amphitheatre, this small semi-circular Roman theatre had gone out of use and been buried before the Renaissance. It was uncovered in the 1930s, and though it looks small, it apparently would have seated 8000 people. It is in use for theatrical performances and there was one proposed for this evening which, given the rain, we did not fancy. Also, there were not many seats and those stone tiers look very hard!
The last church we visited was the Basilica di Santa Croce, widely considered to be the finest example of the Barocco Leccese style, and its façade is a riot of ornamentation. Unfortunately when we visited much of that façade was covered in scaffolding as restoration was in progress.
The church was built over a lengthy period, starting in the mid sixteenth century when construction started on a replacement for an earlier monastery church on this site. The lower part of the façade was finished by 1582 and the dome by 1590. But it was 1699 before the church could be considered finished, with the addition of the upper façade.
The columns you can see just at the bottom of my photo are surmounted by a frieze and above that a number of human and animal figures support the upper section. The human figures represent Turkish prisoners taken by the Christian League at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, while the animals symbolise the Christian powers who fought the battle: the eagle the Holy Roman Empire, the dragon the symbol of the family of the Pope at the time, the griffon the Republic of Genoa, the lion the Republic of Venice and so on. Near the top in the centre is the elaborate rose window.
Santa Croce means Holy Cross, and this church is so called because it has a relic, a piece of wood said to be a fragment of the true cross. I took a photograph of the reliquary, but, like many of my interior photos taken without flash, it wasn't very good.
By the end of the tour we were extremely wet, especially about the feet, and very tired, so we went to find a sandwich for lunch, and after that, we went to see the Faggiano Museum, an independent archaeological museum authorized by the Lecce government. Mr Faggiano, a chef, bought a building hoping to transform it into a trattoria, but there seemed to be a problem with damp and a possible broken sewer pipe, so Mr Faggiano called his sons to help and they started digging. They found a subterranean world dating back more than 2000 years. They found post holes from ancient wooden houses dating to the 5th century BC, a Messapian tomb (the Messapians were the people from the eastern Adriatic who founded the town), a huge cistern, a Roman granary, etchings from the Knights Templar, 16th century frescos and the remains of a nunnery. So after 7 years of digging by the family, supervised by an archaeologist, instead of a trattoria, the building became a museum.
On the ground floor, glass panels let you look into the the cistern, the granary and the tombs. A system of pulleys let the earliest occupants draw up water from the cistern up three floors.
Upstairs, we looked at the nuns' dormitory.
There was a nun's bed under each of the arches.
A further narrow staircase led up to a balcony turret used as a watchtower in the 14th century. You would have been able to see beyond the old city walls, though today the view is obscured by modern apartment buildings.
Later we returned to the hotel for our siesta. My back is holding out so far, thanks to the shoulder brace, but more than half a day of slow walking and standing about puts it under some strain.
Tomorrow we go to Otranto and the weather report is for more thunderstorms, so we can only hope for the best.
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