Thirty-three years ago, the “Sophisticated Traveler,” the travel supplement of the New York Times, published an article by the eminent food writer Patience Gray about Salento, the southern tip of Apulia. In a way that piece, “South to the Salento,” put the place back on the map. Gray recommended a walk in the alleys of the old town of Lecce. At the time, Patience Gray and her sculptor husband Norman Mommens had been living in Salento for twenty years, where they had bought and restored a 17th century decrepit “masseria.” It had been a sheep farm once, but the sheep were no longer there. Gray had already published her masterpiece “Honey from a Weed,” reviewed by Edward Behr in “The Art of Eating” as “the one of the best books that will ever be written about food”.
The piece, splendidly written, is still a reliable Baedeker for a short tour of Salento, notwithstanding the passing of time and some unavoidable changes in the places described by Gray.
One of the many alleys of Lecce.
Patience Gray wrote that Salento, no doubt due to its remoteness from the more prominent Rome and Venice and Naples, and was a “closed book to all but a little stream of dedicated travelers.”
Things change fast, though not always for the better. Over the last twenty years, Salento has become a leading destination for Italian and international travelers. In summer throngs of tourists from every corner of the world make a rush for the resorts (built haphazardly and obliterating the natural landscape), along the seaside and at the small towns and villages inland. They spend the day roaming the land, riding their deluxe coaches, enjoying the “clear, fresh and sweet waters” (to paraphrase Francis Petrarch) of the Ionian or the Adriatic Sea, or lying on the beach, being roasted and peeled by the scorching sun.
Chances are that you might end up engulfed in one of the parties of tourists wearing headphones and following a colored flag held high by a multilingual guide speaking on a microphone.
Lecce itself, the “Florence of the South”, as the town is often dubbed for its sumptuous architecture, has changed since Gray published her article. To begin with, if you walk along the alleys of the old town of Lecce, you no longer run the risk of being run over by cars as Gray warned prospective visitors, since the area is now closed to traffic, except for residents. So as Ernesto Alvino tells the readers of his guidebook “A Day in Lecce,” Gray’s favorite little guide to the capital of Salento, you can safely “stroll around in complete freedom.” Today, chances are that you might end up engulfed in one of the parties of tourists wearing headphones and following a colored flag held high by a multilingual guide speaking on a microphone.
To start exploring the town, Gray suggested using as a point of reference the statue of Sant’Oronzo, the patron saint, towering high atop a Roman column in the middle of the square. You would not have been able to do that until last April, since the 17th century bronze statue, worn away by time and weather, was removed for restoration years ago. As it turned out, it was beyond repair, so a new statue was commissioned and it has recently been put back on the column. Should you be curious about the column, you might like to know that it was one of the two that once marked the end of the Appian Way at the port of Brindisi.
Sant’Oronzo, also known as Orontius of Lecce.
To be honest, you would have some difficulty in using Sant’Oronzo’s statue as a landmark, unless you were in the square or in the immediate vicinity, because several tall buildings obstruct the view. The notes of “Schumann and Chopin cascading from elderly pianos in upper rooms” are long lost, since the conservatory, once in the old town, moved elsewhere. Your “peregrinations among Lecce’s delicate convolutions of carved stone” will nevertheless be fascinating. The façades of the ancient palatial buildings, the residences of the local gentry, and most of the Baroque churches have been restored in the course of the last twenty years and are now visible in all their magnificence. Several of the noble mansions have been converted into B&Bs.
The absence of traffic will allow you to wander freely, while “your astonished eye fastens on patrician architecture: carved portals partly worn away, balconies upheld by contorted human and animal caryatids, loggias open to the upper air.” The 17th century Basilica of Santa Croce, with the adjacent Palazzo dei Celestini, and Piazza del Duomo, with the Cathedral, the bell tower, the Bishop’s Palace and the Seminary, all built between the 17th and the 18th centuries, will take your breath away. You would agree with Gray, who saw the enclosed space of Piazza del Duomo as “a true instance of architecture as frozen music.” Looking at the Bishop’s Palace, she noted “… you may have an operatic illusion … You might mistake it for that of the Commendatore in the first act of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni.’”
Relics of the past abound in Lecce. The Roman amphitheater, built during the Augustan Age, between the 1st and the 2nd century A.D. is undergoing some long deserved restoration. On the contrary, the Roman theater, probably also built during the same age, situated behind the Church of Santa Chiara, is still as Gray saw it more than thirty years ago, neglected and “forgotten by all but lizards, cats, its sunken stage embraced by a semicircle of tiered stone from which green weed, wall pellitory, is ramping.”
A new archaeological area (“Parco Archeologico di Rudiae”) is now open to the public, about four kilometers southeast from the town center. Excavations carried out over the last decades have unearthed remains of the ancient Messapian town of Rudiae, including an amphitheater and a necropolis with hypogeous tombs. Two rows of walls, still partly visible surrounded the settlement. Gray informs us that the Messapians are “an obscure race … who are said to have migrated from Epirus, from Dalmatia, and perhaps Crete, in the time of Homer.”
Gray, a keen archaeologist herself, suggests a visit to the Museo Provinciale, named after its founder, Duke Sigismondo Castromediano, where large and interesting collections of finds dating from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages are displayed.
Most of old little shops, once patronized by the Leccese and the visitors in quest for local delicatessen, have disappeared, supplanted by souvenir shops. They also happen to sell “fichi mandorlati,” described by Gray as desiccated “split figs stuffed with almonds, shreds of cinnamon and fennel seeds, lightly roasted and packed with bay leaves” and “cotognata” (quince paste). It is possible, as Gray hints, that “cotognata” was introduced by Catalan cooks serving at the court of the Aragonese kings, who ruled over the Kingdom of Naples (this part of Italy, once known as Terra d’Otranto was part of the kingdom) in the 15th century. For the other local specialties, such as mozzarella cheese, “scamorza” (soft, stringy pear-shaped cheese, fresh or smoked) and “giuncata,” which Gray describes as “creamy ricotta, drained in rushes” (the term comes from “giunco,” a rush, Juncus acutus, quite common in the marches of this part of Italy), you have now to rely on a good supermarket. In any bakery here you still find “puce,” little breads baked with olives and “cucuzzate” similar to pucce but without olives and “with zucchini, tomato and onions incorporated into the dough.”
The main shopping precinct is now Piazza Mazzini (about 600 meters west of Piazza Sant’Oronzo) and the surrounding streets. That’s where you would steer for quality clothes, shoes, houseware, and jewelry.
It would be a pity to depart without sitting one last time in front of Alvino’s and sipping a digestive.
Not all the charm of Lecce of the old days has vanished. Caffè Alvino, overlooking Piazza Sant’Oronzo, the real hub of the town, besides providing excellent coffee, still offers tempting “rustici,” fragrant pies of flaky pastry filled with melting mozzarella and a bit of tomato. On the other side of the Piazza, a new shining Bar Pasticceria Martinucci (a branch of a local chain of confectionary, bars, and cake shops) recently opened. Their “rustici” and cakes rival Alvino’s. They also produce a few variations of the celebrated “pasticciotto Leccese,” a small cake of short pastry variously filled with plain custard, custard and sour cherry, ricotta and pistachio cream, chocolate, Nutella, you name it. Martinucci’s ice-creams are said to be incomparable.
Some of the old “cartapesta” (papier mâché) workshops survive in Via della Catapesta, the alley leading to the Basilica of Santa Croce (but can be also found elsewhere) and it is possible to observe the old masters (and thank God, some young ones) at work.
If you get hungry and the “rustico” you probably had at mid-morning was not enough to appease your hunger, there are scores of restaurants and “trattorie” in the old town and in the adjacent streets. It would be a pity to depart without sitting one last time in front of Alvino’s and sipping a digestive. Patience Gray would recommend a glass of Amaro San Domenico, still produced by San Domenico Friars in Lecce.
- Unless otherwise stated, all quotations are from Patience Gray’s “South to the Salento.” Gray’s article was republished, with the same title, a few years ago by the Leccese publisher Kurumuni (2020), edited by Nicolas Gray (the writer’s son) and his wife Maggie Armstrong. The tiny booklet includes both the original English text and the Italian translation. It is available in the bookshops in town or from the publisher.
