A day in Lecce - Day 13

We moved! I was missing real daylight so I asked our landlord if we could move to the street side apartment. We could and he offered to do it all for us while we headed out into Lecce. We walked back through the park where we enjoyed the concert last night and straight through the old Celestine convent which is now the Palazzo of the prefecture. This led us straight to the first of 6 churches we visited on our Lecce Baroque Tour - 9 euros each. We found them all to be stunning examples of baroque architecture and art. 

1) Basilica of San Croce

Main Alter

Outside facade

Paper mache statues - a specialist art form here

Outside facade again

The stunning roof

The roof again

A side alter

2) Chiesa del Gesu o del Buon Consiglio

The main alter

The roof

3) Church of Saint Irene

4) The Duomo

Then a break for coffee! Francesco our lovely landlord recommended 2 local specialities to us. Rústico which is a savoury pastry made with tomato, mozzarella and a bechamel sauce, and Pasticiotto which is a little sweet cake. I had Nutella in mine! 

Rústico

Rústico and 2 pasticiottos

All accompanied by 2 very accomplished musicians 

Then onwards to more churches! The beauty of visiting a church is that is cool, quiet and beautiful inside 

5) Chiesa di Santa Chiara

6) Chiesa di San Matteo 

And finally the most fun of all. There was a wedding on so we had to wait outside until it finished. So we had the fun of guest watching, bride watching and seeing all the beautiful flowers that the wedding party had provided. We spoke to one of the attendants and he said they had a wedding every day! 

All the beautiful colourful long dresses of the ladies

The stunning facade as we waited

The cool dude in his shades and blue tuxedo

The dad and his short trousers

 

Then the beautiful bride. They needed the umbrella to protect themselves from all the rice being thrown!

And all the wedding guests. They had fizz and nibbles right there in front of the church

We finished up our grand tour with a visit to the Roman theatre, still in amazing condition and used for concerts and theatrical productions.

Back to the apartment just after 2PM to escape the heat to find we had indeed  been moved to the front room, much better. We had a late afternoon stroll to gather provisions for dinner, including a roast chicken, which we ate in the apartment. After dinner we strolled out into the centre again to see Saturday night in Lecce. The streets were busy but fun. A singer in the main square and the city buzzing. A few final photos and home to bed