Cattedrale di Sant' Agata (source: Visual Puglia )
Placed in the middle of evocative, charming Piazza Duomo there is the beautiful Cathedral of Lecce, built in 1114 and subsequently reconstructed by Giuseppe Zimbalo between 1659 and 1670. Its sober main façade on two orders, shows a triangular tympanum with statues and a huge bronze door created for the Jubilee of 2000. From the square, the beautiful side façade can be seen. This is a stately triumphal arc surmounted by a statue of S. Oronzo and a valuable portal decorated with dancing putti.
Its magnificent inside is developed over one nave and two aisles. The nave has a gold, wooden lacunars ceiling made in 1685 with the transept. These include several interesting paintings portraying the preaching of S. Oronzo, the Expulsion of the plague, the martyrdom of S. Oronzo and the Last Supper, this last hosted in the transept. The altars, including elegant twisted columns decorated with flower, plant and animal patterns, have a high artistic value. Besides Giuseppe Zimbalo, Cesare Penna and Pietro Gagliardi contributed to the first and second altar. Four column rows enriched with Romanesque capitals can be found in the crypt, a cubic hall constructed in 1517.
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Sun, sea, wind. Nature strikes in the first place, when one gets to this land stretch in balance between two seas. Salento has its core in the province of Lecce, - a Baroque Florence in Southern Italy – and reaches the provinces of Brindisi over the Adriatic Sea, and Taranto on the Ionian Sea side. The cities and inland towns expressions of the unique Lecce Baroque with Messapi and Salento Grecìa can still be seen. Its language, songs and feasts still show the culture of Graecia Magna. Surf, kite-surf and windsurf lovers never miss the beaches facing the Alimini lakes, while scuba diving fans just have to choose among the several equipped centers and charming sea beds of the Ionian coast as well as of the area between Otranto and Santa Maria di Leuca.
Church and hermitage of Santa Maria of the Angels - Scorrano
Lighthouse and aqueduct - Santa Maria di Leuca
Salento coast is characterized by a high variety in landscapes: the clear, fine sand beaches of Santa Cesarea seafront; famous caves such as Castro cave with its Grotta Romanelli, one of the most important Italian prehistoric settlements, and Grotta Zinzulusa, 'the pearl of caves', owing its name to the dialect word 'zinzuli', ('rags'), used by fishermen to indicate its beautiful stalactites and stalagmites
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Baroque style affirmed in Apulia during Counter-Reformation upon the will of Roman Church. A way of exalting Catholic symbols, Lecce and Nardò Baroque has its own characteristics that make it different from the same artistic style in other regions. Its peculiarities derive from the use of amber-colored Lecce stone as well as decorations used to mask the structures on which they are mounted
In Southern Apulia, at the heart of Salento, nine municipalities united to save what is still left of the ancient Grika culture. In this area of Salento there can still be found traces of Graecia Magna Grika language spoken in the Basilian convents dismantled after the council of Trent
Project created in collaboration with InnovaPuglia.
Regione Puglia
Regione Puglia