Lecce

Lecce lies on the flat, limestone-floored Salento plain, in the heart of the Terra d'Otranto, and its soft honey-coloured stone suited the chisel. After the Norman conquest it became the seat of a county that lasted from 1055 to 1463, and it was the birthplace of Tancred, the last Norman king of Sicily. Under the Hohenstaufen and the Angevins it remained one of the largest fiefs in the kingdom.

In 1463 the county was annexed directly to the crown of Ferrante of Aragon, and under the Aragonese the city grew into one of the richest and liveliest in the Mediterranean. Against the threat of an Ottoman landing, Charles V had a new line of walls and a castle built in the early sixteenth century. Work on the church of Santa Croce, begun in 1353, was stopped until 1549 and not completed until 1695, with a façade crowded with animals, grotesque figures and plants. From 1630 under Spanish rule the city became a building site where private patrons, clergy and congregations raised ever more elaborate Baroque churches and palaces. A plague in 1656 killed thousands, and Saint Oronzo, credited with ending it, replaced Saint Irene as patron. In 1734, after a brief Austrian interlude, the nobility took power in the city.