Salento to be discovered

SALENTO is a great plain carefully lay down on the sea whose coasts introduce a variety of situations to constitute a continuous surprise. Earth of the Messapi, Normanni, Greci and Bizantini. The cliffs that constitute it form the splendid "Lecce's Stone". Lecce is the main town of Province, risen in preroman age and in the centuries fallen under several dominations but it bloomed particularly under the Norman one.
From the Angioni and then from the Spanish it was transformed in fortress and it had therefore also strategic importance. From Roman age it conserves interesting rests of an amphitheatre and a theatre, both of the time of Adrian. The Church of S. Francesco from Paola, and the Arch of triumph erected from the Leccesi in honour of Carl V belong to the XVI sec., but the famous architectonic characteristic of the city is given from the baroque (the Dome, Church of S. Croce, S. Nicolò and Cataldo, S. Chiara, S. Matteo, the old Convent of the Celestini); for this reason Lecce is called also the "Firenze of the South".

The Leccese Baroque
In the half of XVII the century in Lecce was born the figure of bishop Luigi Pappacoda, to which it is acknowledged the propulsive activity for the progressive affirmation of the famous artistic phenomenon like "leccese baroque". The base's architecture appears to the observer in second' order than the exuberance ornaments: in the leccesi buildings the decorations turn out concentrated on the facades, in the courtyards and on the balconies. One decorative exuberance possible because of the elevated dowries of the leccese stone.

	Lecce
	Galatone
	Gallipoli
	The Menhirs, The Dolmens. The Specchie