Lecce: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Lecce is built of a local limestone so soft when it comes out of the ground that it can be cut with a knife, and it hardens and turns gold in the air over years. The masons of the seventeenth century used that to cover the churches with fruit, monsters, cherubs and beasts — the style the Italians call barocco leccese. Two hours, flat, all in the old town, and the façades are best in the last hour of light.
A short history of Lecce
Lecce was founded by the Messapians, an ancient people of southern Italy, and in the Roman period it was called Lupiae. From that period an amphitheatre of the 2nd century survives, part of which was uncovered in the city centre at the beginning of the 20th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries dozens of churches and palaces were built here from a soft, yellowish limestone that is easy to carve, creating a style known as 'Lecce Baroque'. The Basilica of Santa Croce took about a hundred and fifty years to build, from 1549 to the end of the 17th century.
The ten best sights in Lecce
1Piazza del DuomoA square with one entrance, so it opens on you all at once; go at night
2Basilica di Santa CroceThe façade took a century and a half; look for the animals in the stone
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3Piazza Sant’Oronzo
The living room of the town, with a Roman arena half dug out of it
4Roman AmphitheatreFound in 1901 when the bank was being built; the rest is still under the square
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5Column of Sant’Oronzo
A column from the end of the Via Appia, with the saint who stopped the plague on top
6Roman TheatreFound in 1929 in a private garden, tucked between houses
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7Porta Napoli
A triumphal arch of 1548 for the emperor Charles V
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8Porta Rudiae
The oldest gate, on the road to the Messapian town that came before Lecce
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9Porta San Biagio
The southern gate, and the evening walk starts from it
10Castle of Charles VBuilt for the emperor against the Turks; the papier-mâché museum is inside
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Lecce →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Lecce:
Free walking tours in Lecce
Carved in butter
Lecce is built of a local limestone so soft when it comes out of the ground that it can be cut with a knife, and it hardens and turns gold in the air over years. The masons of the seventeenth century used that to cover the churches with fruit, monsters, cherubs and beasts — the style the Italians call barocco leccese. Two hours, flat, all in the old town, and the façades are best in the last hour of light.
- Porta Napoli · The town put up this triumphal arch in 1548 for Charles V, the emperor who walled Lecce against the Turks. It stands on the road to Naples, the capital of the kingdom Lecce belonged to, and the coat of arms on top is his.
- Piazza del Duomo · A closed square with a single way in, so it opens on you all at once — the cathedral, the bishop’s palace and the seminary on three sides. The cathedral has two façades because the square had one entrance: the grand one faces the gap you walk through, not the nave. Come back at night when it is lit.
- Sant’Irene · Saint Irene was the protector of Lecce until the plague of 1656, when the town decided that Saint Oronzo had saved it instead and gave him the job. Her church stayed, on the main street, and so did her statue over the door.
- Basilica di Santa Croce · Begun in 1549 and finished in 1695, so three generations of masons worked on one front. Look at the balcony: it rests on a row of carved figures — lions, dragons, a harpy, and men in turban that are the defeated Turks. The soft stone is the only reason this much carving was possible.
- San Matteo · A church whose front is convex below and concave above, the whole façade bending in two directions — an idea borrowed from Borromini in Rome. It is in a small square most visitors miss, south of the main sights.
- Porta San Biagio · The southern gate, and in the evening the town walks out through it and back — the passeggiata. Most of the old town is closed to cars, so after nine the streets between here and the cathedral are full of people and nothing else.
What is under the floor
Every time Lecce digs, something comes up. A Roman amphitheatre turned up in 1901 under the main square; a Roman theatre in 1929 in a private garden; and in 2001 a man trying to fix a toilet found two thousand years of history under his house. This route goes down through the layers, and one of them is the Jewish quarter of the town. Two hours, flat, and the museums close at lunch.
- Roman Amphitheatre · In 1901 workers digging the foundations of the Bank of Italy hit the top of a Roman arena of the second century AD. About a third of it has been dug out; the rest is still under the square, the church and the buildings around it, and the town decided to leave it there.
- Column of Sant’Oronzo · The Via Appia, the great road from Rome, ended at Brindisi with two marble columns at the harbour. One of them fell in 1528, and Brindisi gave the pieces to Lecce, which put it back together in this square with its patron saint on top — the saint the town credits with stopping the plague of 1656.
- Jewish Museum · Under a palazzo on Via Umberto I are the excavated rooms of the medieval Jewish quarter, including a ritual bath. The community lived here for centuries until the Jews were expelled from the Kingdom of Naples in 1541; the street names around it still remember them.
- Castle of Charles V · After the Ottomans took Otranto, forty kilometres away, in 1480, Lecce lived in fear of being next. Charles V rebuilt this castle and the walls in the 1530s and 1540s for exactly that reason. Inside today is a museum of papier-mâché — the craft Lecce used to make its church statues, which were lighter and cheaper than wood.
- Museo Faggiano · In 2001 Luciano Faggiano bought this building to open a trattoria, and the toilet would not drain. He and his sons dug to find the pipe and kept finding things: Messapian tombs, a Roman granary, a medieval chapel, marks the family believes are Templar. The trattoria never opened; the house is now a museum of what was under it.
- Roman Theatre · Found in 1929 in the gardens of private houses, and it is still hemmed in by them — the stage and the lower rows of seats in a gap between palazzi. The small museum beside it explains what the town looked like when it was called Lupiae.
The coast the Turks came to
The Adriatic coast south of Lecce is the part of Italy closest to the Balkans, and in 1480 an Ottoman fleet landed here and took Otranto. Everything on this coast was built with that memory — watchtowers every few kilometres, a fortified village, a castle — and between them are the cliffs and sea pools people now come for. A full day and a car, with a swimsuit.
- Acaya · In 1535 the military engineer Gian Giacomo dell’Acaya walled his family’s village into a fortress against the Turkish raids, laid out on a grid with a castle at the corner. It is one of very few such villages that still stands whole, and people still live inside the walls.
- Grotta della Poesia · The roof of a sea cave collapsed and left a round pool of seawater open to the sky, connected to the sea underground. The site beside it, Roca Vecchia, was a Bronze Age settlement, and the cave walls are covered in inscriptions in Messapian, Greek and Latin to a local god. In summer people jump in from the rim.
- Torre dell’Orso · A sandy bay under pine woods, and off the southern end stand two sea stacks the town calls the Two Sisters. The story is that two sisters drowned here and the sea turned them to stone so they would stay together. The tower that gives the place its name is one of the coastal watchtowers against the Turks.
- Baia dei Turchi · The name means the Bay of the Turks, and the tradition is that this is where the Ottoman fleet landed in July 1480 before marching on Otranto. Today it is reached by a path through pine forest and has some of the clearest water on the coast.
- Otranto Cathedral · The whole floor is a single mosaic laid between 1163 and 1165 by a monk named Pantaleone: a tree of life running the length of the nave, with Adam and Eve, Noah, Alexander the Great — and King Arthur, labelled by name. In a side chapel are the skulls of the men of Otranto who were killed in 1480 for refusing to convert; the Church made them saints in 2013.
- Otranto Castle · The Ottomans held Otranto for a year and left in 1481, and the Aragonese kings of Naples rebuilt this castle so it would not happen again. Albania is about eighty kilometres across the strait, and on a clear morning you can see its mountains from the walls.
Getting to Lecce and getting around
- Brindisi Airport · The airport for Lecce, forty minutes away; the shuttle bus meets the flights
- Lecce Station · The end of the line from Rome and Bologna, and the little Salento railway starts here
Cheap eats in Lecce
Salento eats standing up more than most of Italy. The breakfast is a pasticciotto, shortcrust filled with custard and eaten warm, with an iced coffee poured over almond milk — caffè in ghiaccio con latte di mandorla, the drink of the region. At noon it is a rustico, puff pastry around béchamel, mozzarella and tomato, or a puccia, a round bread split and filled. A couple of euro each, at the bar counter.
- Pasticceria Ascalone, Galatina · Warm pasticciotti through the morning, about a euro and a half
- Piazza Sant’Oronzo · Iced coffee with almond, a couple of euro, standing
- Porta Napoli · A rustico from the bakeries by the gate, warm at eleven
- Porta Rudiae · Puccia stuffed to order, a few euro
- Gallipoli · Raw sea urchins at the harbour, by the half-dozen
- Otranto · Fried fish in a paper cone along the walls
- Porto Cesareo · Fish sold off the boats on the quay in the morning
Museums in Lecce
Lecce’s museums are mostly holes in the ground: an arena under the main square, a theatre in a garden, a house where a family dug two thousand years deep. And one of the layers is Jewish — a medieval quarter excavated under a palazzo, and on the Ionian coast a museum of the Holocaust survivors who waited here for Palestine.
- Museum of Memory, Santa Maria al Bagno · The survivors’ murals; small, free, and closed some afternoons
- Jewish Museum · The medieval Jewish quarter and its ritual bath, underground
- Museo Faggiano · Two thousand years under one house; the family shows you round
- Museo Castromediano · Messapian vases and the town before Rome; free
- Castle of Charles V · The papier-mâché museum: church statues made of paper
- Roman Theatre · A theatre between houses, with a small museum beside it
Nature and day trips near Lecce
Salento is the heel of Italy, with a sea on each side. The Adriatic to the east is cliffs, caves and cold clear water; the Ionian to the west is long sand and shallow turquoise, and that is the side for sunsets. The land between is flat, red earth, olive groves and dry-stone walls.
- Grotta della Poesia · A sea pool in a collapsed cave; go before nine
- Grotta Zinzulusa · A sea cave with hanging stalactites; guided visits
- Santa Maria di Leuca · The end of the land; boat trips to the sea caves
- Porto Selvaggio · Pine woods to a rocky cove; cold springs in the sea
- Punta Prosciutto · Dunes and white sand on the Ionian side
- Laghi Alimini · Two lakes and a long wild beach north of Otranto
- Le Cesine · A wetland reserve close to town; herons and dune pines
Things to do in Lecce with kids
For children, Salento is the Ionian side: shallow, sandy and warm. The Adriatic cliffs and pools are for older children who can swim. In town, the castle and a museum where a family dug through history under their own house are easy wins.
- Porto Cesareo · Shallow turquoise water for a long way out
- Punta Prosciutto · Soft sand and dunes to climb
- San Cataldo · The town beach, fifteen minutes by bus
- Museo Faggiano · Glass floors over tunnels and tombs
- Castle of Charles V · A castle in the middle of town, and paper statues
- Torre dell’Orso · A sandy bay with the Two Sisters rocks offshore
Holy places in Lecce
Lecce has dozens of baroque churches in a town of under a hundred thousand people, built by orders competing for space after the Counter-Reformation. Beyond the town, two churches tell the region’s strangest stories: a floor with King Arthur on it, and a chapel where women bitten by the tarantula came to dance.
- Basilica di Santa Croce · A century and a half of carving on one façade
- Otranto Cathedral · The mosaic floor with King Arthur, and the chapel of skulls
- Santa Caterina, Galatina · Frescoes covering every wall, and the tarantula story
- San Matteo · A façade that bends two ways at once
- Sant’Irene · The saint who lost her job to Oronzo in 1656
- Leuca Lighthouse · The church at the end of the land, beside the light
Nightlife in Lecce
Lecce is a university town, and the evening starts late and outdoors — an aperitivo on the squares from eight, the streets of the old town full until past midnight. In summer the nightlife moves to the coast, to Gallipoli on the Ionian side, which is Puglia’s party town. And in August there is the Taranta.
- Piazza del Duomo · The lit square at night, before or after dinner
- Porta Napoli · The student bars around the gate
- Piazza Sant’Oronzo · Aperitivo over the Roman arena from eight
- Gallipoli · Beach clubs and late bars in summer; Puglia’s party town
- Melpignano · The Taranta night, late August; book early
- Otranto · Bars along the walls over the harbour
Frequently asked questions about Lecce
What is there to see in Lecce?
The top sights in Lecce are Piazza del Duomo, Basilica di Santa Croce and Piazza Sant’Oronzo. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Lecce?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Lecce without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Lecce?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Lecce, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Carved in butter.
How do you get to Lecce and get around?
The main ways are Brindisi Airport and Lecce Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Lecce, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Lecce that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Lecce for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.