Incentro Comfort Suite is in a perfect location for those who want to visit the beauties of the baroque city, walking comfortably on foot, by bike or with the convenient electric scooter for hire.

Here are some useful suggestions not to miss the architectural wonders that our city hides in its alleys. Follow us…

Lecce, Lupiae in Latin, is between two seas: Adriatic sea (11 km far from) and Ionian sea (23 km far from). The ancient Messapian origins and the archaeological Roman remains are mixed with the richness and opulence of the seventeenth-century Baroque. The architectural development and the decorative enrichment of the facades characterized the style of the city so as to give rise to the definition of Lecce Baroque.

At the gates of the city there is a complex consisting of the Church of Saints Niccolò and Cataldo and the adjacent Monastery, which today houses the faculty of Cultural Heritage. It was founded in 1180 and housed the Benedictine monks first and the Olivetan fathers then (1494-1807). Then it was the National High School in the Napoleonic era.
A short distance away the Obelisk, erected in 1822 in honor of Ferdinand I of Bourbon; it is decorated in the four facades with some figures in bas-relief, including the bottom dolphin that bites the Turkish crescent moon, to symbolize victory against the Turks. The Obelisk is in front of Porta Napoli (1548), the triumphal arch built in honour of Charles V that marks the entrance to the historic center of the city and from which the consular road to Naples was taken.

From here, taking Via Palmieri, you will find the Church of Santa Maria della Porta and the small Paisiello Theatre, a typical example of “Italian theater” that spread between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century. The theatre stands on a former wooden theatre of the ‘700s. Further on, Palazzo Marrese and its magnificent and refined façade.

Continuing on Via Palmieri you find Piazza del Duomo a rare example of a closed square; overlooking it, the Metropolitan Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta (the Cathedral) whose “false facade” is a theatrical solution adopted to avoid that the visitor was in front of a flat wall and without decorations; on the left, the majestic Bell Tower, by Giuseppe Zimbalo; the Episcope, an archiepiscopal residence, whose original construction dates back to the fifteenth century, had several alterations that embellished the exterior and enlarged the interior; on the right side of the square there is the late ‘600 Palace of the Seminary.

A few minutes to Porta Rudiae, the most interesting and ancient of the gates of Lecce, which turned towards the ancient city of Rudiae. Also called Sant’Oronzo, the gate is surmounted by the patron saints of the city: Oronzo, Irene and Domenico. On the way to reach the gate, there are the Church of San Giovanni Battista designed by Zimbalo and built between the end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,  the Church and the Conservatory of Sant’Anna (1680), projected perhaps by Zimbalo for the same compositional design of the main façade of the Cathedral.

Then the Church of Santa Teresa built in the first half of the seventeenth century.
Towards the center, on Via Vittorio Emanuele II, there is the Church of Sant’Irene, the ancient protector of the city. Next to the church, the Convent of the Teatini, hosting today cultural events and fairs-markets.