Roman Amphitheatre Lecce, a university town and centre of learning is sometimes referred to as ‘the Florence of the south’. The town is famous for it’s baroque architecture which is so extravagant it is know to Italians as barocco leccese (Lecce baroque). The local stone actually encourages extravagance; it’s particularly malleable yet soon after being quaried it hardens, making it the perfect sculpting material.

Basillica della Santa Croce and Convento dei Celestini We arrived on a warm sunny Sunday by train after a pleasant journey through the flat agricultural countryside and strolled from the station along a wide tree lined avenue to the historic quarter where we saw the remains of a 2nd century AD Roman amphitheatre and nearby the Colonna di Sant Oronzo, one of the two columns which originally marked the end of Via Apia in Brindisi. This column was subsequently donated to Lecce and topped by a disproportionately small statue of St Oronzo and is not as well maintained as the one in Brindisi. Unfortunately the Roman Theatre and museum was closed for renovation.

Ornate carvings of he Basillica della Santa Croce We basked in the sunshine under the 70m high bell-tower of the 12th Century Cathedral and wandered the maze of narrow streets where the gift and tourist shops were open. I choose the wrong café for lunch, despite the traditional Lecce food looking good in the display cases it was all greasy and stodgy.

The Basillica della Santa Croce is an amazing display of baroque with every niche and twisting column decorated with ornate statues. Immediately north is the Convento dei Celestini by the same architect and just as baroque which is now the Palazzo del Governo (headquarters of the local government). From there we walked around the public gardens which at one time had fountains in three inter-connected pools spanned by a small arched bridge but the pools are now empty and unkempt. For us, Lecce was worth seeing but it is not as clean and well maintained as Brindidi.