Lecce Discovery Guide

Lecce is built out of a limestone soft enough to carve like wood, and in the seventeenth century its masons did exactly that to every surface they could reach. The result is a compact golden city of facades that look more like furniture than architecture — a version of the baroque that exists nowhere else in Italy.

The friction is the distance. Lecce sits in the far heel of Puglia, four hours by train from Naples, and is usually given one night on the way to the beaches.

That is the wrong shape for a visit. Stay three, use it as the base for the whole Salento — both coasts are half an hour off — and see the carving late in the day, when low sun rakes across it and the stone turns amber.

Santa Croce, twice

Once from across the street to take in the whole facade, and once close enough to pick individual figures out of the frieze. Late afternoon light is when the stone is at its best.

The bell tower

Climb the Duomo's campanile for the only view that shows the city as a flat golden field of roofs with the countryside beyond.

Piazza del Duomo after dark

The square is lit and usually empty at night, and the single entrance makes arriving in it a deliberate act.

Under the pavement

The amphitheatre in Piazza Sant'Oronzo, and the Roman theatre a few streets away that most visitors miss entirely.

Cartapesta

The workshops around the centre and the museum in the castle, for a craft that is still practised rather than performed.

Both coasts

Half an hour east to the Adriatic at San Cataldo or Roca, or south-west to the Ionian beaches. A car makes the Salento; without one you are limited to the summer bus network.

Lecce is a southern provincial capital that is used to being admired but has not reorganised itself around visitors.

The centre is genuinely lived in. There is a university, a working civil service, ordinary shops on the main streets, and a passeggiata every evening that is for residents rather than an attraction. Outside July and August the balance tips firmly towards the local.

The Salento identity is strong and distinct from the rest of Puglia, let alone the rest of Italy: its own dialect, in a few villages a surviving Greek-derived dialect called griko, its own music, and a long memory of poverty and emigration that shapes how people talk about the present boom in tourism — with a mixture of pride and wariness.

The Xylella epidemic in the olive groves is the other live subject. It has changed the landscape and damaged the agricultural economy, and it comes up quickly in conversation.

The pressures here are water, the coast and the shape of the season.

Water is the first. The Salento has no rivers and depends entirely on an aquifer that is over-drawn in summer, with restrictions a normal feature of August in the countryside. Treat it accordingly.

The coast takes a heavy load in July and August, concentrated into a few weeks and a few beaches. Going in May, June, September or October spreads it, costs less and is more pleasant besides.

The olive groves are under quarantine controls because of Xylella. Do not move plant material, cuttings or soil out of the area, however harmless it seems.

Buy the papier-mâché from the workshops that make it rather than from souvenir racks, and the wine and oil from local producers — the agricultural economy here has taken a genuine hit and the money matters more than it would in Florence.

April, May and early June are the best months: warm, green before the burn-off, and comfortable for long days on foot or in the car.

Late August brings the feast of Sant'Oronzo and, at Melpignano nearby, the Notte della Taranta, which is the biggest single night in the Salento year.

July and August are hot and the coasts are very busy with Italian holidaymakers, though Lecce itself stays more manageable than the beach towns.

September and October are excellent — the sea is still warm, the crowds have gone and prices fall sharply.

December has the papier-mâché nativity trade at its most visible, and 16 January is the Fòcara bonfire at Novoli, half an hour away.

What a visitor actually pays in Lecce

Lecce is good value by Italian standards and cheaper than anywhere comparable in the north. Prices climb steeply in August, when the whole Salento fills up, and drop a long way from November to March. Eating is notably cheap: the local rustico, puccia and pasticciotto are street-food prices.