Starting from the second half of the 16th century Lecce, the capital of the Salento Peninsula, experienced a period of particular good fortune that was destined to last for two centuries. The city became a small Versailles attracting the nobility and swallowing their icomes in a contest between ostentation and the decorating of their palazzi, aristocratic chapels and the churches placed under their devout and munificent patronage. The presence of numerous religious orders gave rise to a series of churches (with luxurious facades like open-air altars, a true reflection of the society of the time) and underlined an artistic flowering that led to the city being given the grandiloquent titles of the Athens of Apulia or the Florence of the Baroque. But the Baroque of Lecce has a quality all of its own because it is inextricably linked to a local secret, a formula that could not be repeated elsewhere: the unique characted of Lecce stone. This is a marly limestone with a compact and homogeneous grain, but which is soft enough to be worked with a chisel and adze.

It hardens when exposed to the elements and gradually becomes a waem golden colour. This stone is the essence of Lecce Baroque which was more concerned with decoration than with actual architecture: spiral columns, sumptuous cornices, ornate balustrades, curved pediments, vases of flowers and fruit, fluttering ribbons, putti and grotesque heads. A bizarre and endless fantasy, un paradis du rococo as a Frenchman write last century. The monument that best illustrates Lecce Baroque is the Basilica of Santa Croce which has recently been restored. The restoration work lasted almost nine years. The friability of the stone, its high content of mineral salts and their solubility on contact with had caused fractures, pitting and deposits of lichens were eating away the building. Now that the scaffolding has been removed, the extraordinary decoration of the facade, rich in symbols, can once again be read figure like a treatise on theology. The next stop for the visitor on a tour of the opulent architecture of Lecce is the Cathedral and adjacent Seminary. However, the whole Cathedral piazza with its campanile and an elaborate well-which has become a symbol of Baroque Lecce-forms a large setting of remarkable unity. Other Baroque monuments in Lecce (often also in need of restoration) are the Church of Santa Chiara with its ornate portal and elegant facade, the Church of SS> Nicolo' and Cataldo, built by the Normans but completed with the addition of a Baroque facade, and the Crurch of the Theatines. But through Lecce, once you have entered the historic centre bound by city walls, is always full of surprises. You need only approach the city through the gate known as Porta Rudiae to have a foretaste of the treasures in store: it is a real triumphal arch adorned by statues of the patron saints of the city.



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