"The homeland of the "Barocco Leccese"" a Lecce Travel Page by effeti

Lecce is placed in the south-east of Italy.... in the "heel" of the boot-shaped Italian paeninsula.
Best known for it's original form of baroque art, a very light and sunny one, it's worth a visit.

Starting from the second half of the 16th century Lecce experienced a period of particular good fortune that was destined to last for two centuries. The started attracting the nobility and swallowing their icomes in a contest between ostentation and the decorating of their "palazzi", aristocratic chapels and the churches placed under their devout and munificent patronage. The presence of numerous religious orders rose a series of churches (with luxurious facades like open-air altars, a true reflection of the society of the time) and underlined an artistic flowering that led to the city being given the grandiloquent titles of the Athens of Apulia or the Florence of the Baroque. But the Baroque of Lecce has a quality all of its own because it is inextricably linked to a local secret, a formula that could not be repeated elsewhere: the unique characted of Lecce stone. This is a marly limestone with a compact and homogeneous grain, but which is soft enough to be worked with a chisel and adze.