Lecce (Lécce in Salento; Λουππίου, Luppìu in griko) is an Italian
town of 93 551 inhabitants, the capital of the homonymous province
of Puglia. Located in an almost central position of the Salento
peninsula, between the Adriatic and Ionian coasts, it is the
easternmost provincial capital of Italy.
The ancient
Messapian origins and the archaeological remains of the Roman
domination place it among the art cities of Italy. Lecce is
distinguished by the richness and exuberance of the typically
seventeenth-century Baroque of the churches and palaces of the
center, built in the local Lecce stone, limestone very suitable for
working with the chisel. The architectural development and
decorative enrichment of the facades was particularly taken care of
during the Kingdom of Naples and characterized the city in such an
original way as to give rise to the definition of Lecce Baroque.
It is home to the University of Salento, and was the Italian
capital of culture in 2015.
In the local geography Lecce occupies the
north-central part of the Salento plain, in the so-called Lecce
board, a vast and uniform lowland of Salento between the terraced
hills of the Murge, to the north, and the Salento greenhouses, to
the south. The area is characterized by a particular soil,
calcareous-marly from the Miocene, which in southern Italy is found
almost exclusively in the Terra d'Otranto and which is commonly
known as "Lecce stone", easily excavated and cut. The morphology of
the territory is on the whole flat.
Characteristics of the
territory are the mighty layers of red earth and the absence of
surface water courses. The karst terrain, however, has innumerable
sinkholes (called vore or capoventi), points of call for rainfalls,
which convey the water into the subsoil, feeding the water table.
Numerous channels dug to facilitate the flow of rain into the
sinkholes, and therefore to avoid the formation of marshes, furrow
the surface. The territory of the municipality of Lecce is crossed
by the Idume, an underground river that flows into the Adriatic Sea
near the marina of Torre Chianca, forming the Idume basin.
The municipal territory extends for 238.93 km² and overlooks the
Adriatic Sea for more than 20 km. It includes the marinas of San
Cataldo, administratively divided between Vernole and Lecce,
Frigole, Torre Chianca, Spiaggiabella and Torre Rinalda and the
hamlet of Villa Convento, administered in part by the municipality
of Novoli and the suburb of San Ligorio. The locality of Casalabate
passed on 15 May 2012 under the jurisdiction of the municipalities
of Squinzano and Trepuzzi due to the outcome of the consultative
referendum of 12 and 13 June 2011. The enclave of the municipality
of Surbo is enclosed in the municipal territory of Lecce. The
territory of Lecce borders the Adriatic Sea to the north and east,
to the south with the municipalities of Lequile, San Cesario di
Lecce, Cavallino, Lizzanello and Vernole, to the west with
Squinzano, Trepuzzi, Novoli, Arnesano and Monteroni di Lecce.
The population is strongly concentrated in the southernmost part
of the municipal territory, where the city rises, while the
territory to the north is largely made up of areas of landscape and
environmental interest and is sparsely populated.
The reference meteorological station is that of Lecce Galatina
meteorological station located 15 km to the south. Based on the
climatic averages of the period 1971-2000, the average temperature
of the coldest month, January, is + 9 ° C, while that of the hottest
month, August, is +26; ° C.
The average annual rainfall is
484 mm, distributed on average over 69 rainy days, with a minimum in
summer, a maximum peak in autumn and a secondary maximum in winter.
Below is the table with the climatic averages recorded in the
thirty-year period 1971-2000 and published in the Climatic Atlas of
Italy of the Meteorological Service of the Air Force for the same
thirty years, while the absolute values refer to the entire
historical series of the station .
Origins of the name
The
ancient Greek geographers, Strabo, Ptolemy, know the toponym (Greek)
Λουππίαι Luppíai or Λουπία Lupía, the Latins give Lupiae and in the
Middle Ages Lipiae, from which Licce and Lecce then derive, with a
regular phonetic result for the region; the etymology of Lupia is
however difficult to find and there is no consensus among scholars;
however, the hypothesis of a connection with the name of the wolf
has been made.
Ancient age
The history of
Lecce begins in an era prior to that of Rome as it has its roots
already in the Messapian age. The first settlement was founded by
populations from Illyria during the migrations of the third
millennium BC and knows the period of greatest maturity in the VII
and IV century BC. However, legend has it that the city was born
around 1200 BC, thanks to Malennio, immediately after the
destruction of Troy, and that he was the first to dominate this area
and to introduce Greek culture to the city, then called Sybar.
In the third century BC Rome conquered all of Salento, therefore
also Sybar, which had changed its name to Lupiae, and the nearby
Rudiae, the city where the poet Quinto Ennio was born who, in the
Annales, sang six centuries of Roman history, starting from the
arrival of Aeneas on the Lazio coast. Between the end of the
republican age and the beginning of the imperial age, Lupiae is
surrounded by walls, built on the Messapian ones, with a forum, a
theater and an amphitheater and an outlet to the sea: Porto Adriano,
the current marina of San Cataldo.
The evangelization of
Lupiae by the patrician Publio Oronzio who, converted to
Christianity by Giusto, a disciple of St. Paul, would have been the
first bishop and the first martyr of the city, is believed to date
back to the Neronian age.
Medieval age
After a brief period of Greek domination, it was sacked by
Totila, the Ostrogothic king, in 542 and 549 and remained under the
dominion of the Eastern Roman Empire for five centuries,
overshadowed by the powerful Otranto, capital of the Byzantine
dominion. Subsequently, from the 6th century onwards, the Saracens,
the Byzantines, the Lombards, the Hungarians and the Slavs took
turns.
It was the Norman conquest that revived Lecce as a
commercial center and extended its territory until it became the
capital of Salento. In fact, starting from Goffredo (1069) the
Norman counts held court here and the last Norman king was born
here, Tancredi, son of Ruggero III. The Normans were followed by the
Swabians of Frederick II and the Angevins. The historical period
between 1055 and 1463 goes by the name of the County of Lecce.
Modern age
"The city of Lecce, which after Naples, the
capital of this kingdom, is the most renowned for its magnificence
of buildings and for the frequency of inhabitants and for the
splendor of civil customs and for the wealth of seafarers."
(Giambattista Vico, October 19, 1731)
From 1463 Lecce was
directly subject to the Kingdom of Naples under the monarchy of
Ferrante d'Aragona. With the Aragonese the city acquired more and
more importance until it became one of the richest and most
culturally alive Mediterranean cities. During this period it
developed in commercial traffic with Florentine, Venetian, Greek,
Genoese, Albanian merchants and was an important cultural center.
In the following two centuries, Salento was repeatedly
threatened by Turkish raids, so much so that under the reign of
Charles V the city was endowed with new walls and a Castle and the
current Porta Napoli.
1630 was the year in which the
construction of many religious structures began. In the Spanish era
the city was transformed into a real open-air construction site, for
the many civil and religious works, which private individuals,
clergy, ecclesiastical congregations, worked hard to erect; in a
crescendo of increasingly beautiful and important works.
A
terrible plague epidemic ravaged Lecce in 1656. The victims were
thousands and the religious tradition tells that, after a long wait,
a miracle occurred through the intercession of Saint Oronzo, who was
then, for this reason, proclaimed patron of the city. Previously the
patroness was Saint Irene.
In 1734, after the brief Austrian
domination, following the danger of a Spanish restoration, the
nobility took power. In 1821 Lecce participated in the Carbonaro
movement and sent an army of resistance to the Austrian troops. In
1848 a provisional government was formed and the Liberal party was
founded: during these years it signed the memorandum of the
Confederate Provinces and participated in the liberal movement of
the South. After the unification of Italy, in particular between
1895 and 1915, the city experienced a considerable building activity
with the construction of numerous public works and the first
expansion outside the walls. New neoclassical, neo-Moorish and
neo-Gothic neighborhoods are created.