Going for breakfast at Patria Palace is like walking into Lecce’s finest pasticceria and being told to eat your heart out. There are platters of fluffy pistachio cornetti and mini almond and fig tarts, trays of juicy roasted tomato focaccia and several spins on the city’s signature pastry — the crumbly, custard-filled pasticciotto. I start with a chocolate and pear variety and order a coffee.
What arrives is unexpected — to me, at least. The waiter puts down a tumbler of ice with a shot of white cloudy liquid at the bottom. He looks at me cheerfully and pours an espresso over the top. “Caffe Leccese,” he says. Coffee, Lecce style. Here it’s served cold and black(ish), mixed with a shot of sweet almond milk syrup (that cloudy liquid) and, it turns out, is as expected as the summer sun. It’s not just the typical way to drink it in the city of Lecce but all over Salento, Puglia’s southernmost region that makes up Italy’s stiletto.
The Patria Palace hotel is an 18th-century palazzo
DARIO BORRUTO
I’m sitting alfresco in the private corner of the piazza belonging to Patria Palace, opposite Santa Croce, Lecce’s ornate cathedral. And just when I thought breakfast couldn’t score much higher for romance, a harpist emerges and a vintage Fiat Cinquecento stuffed with a bride zooms past. Surely she’s not getting married at Lecce’s blockbuster basilica, is she? Oh, she is.
Santa Croce has a mind-bogglingly detailed façade, featuring cherubs and dragons and baskets abundant with fruit. The lower sections are renaissance and the upper baroque, its completion in 1695 having dragged on over a century of architectural evolution. Patria Palace, the hotel where I am staying, is an 18th-century palazzo built as a home for a noble family by a prodigious baroque architect. These old friends have sat facing each other for over 300 years, and in summertime the space between them is choked with tour groups. But come down to breakfast early enough and you can catch a rare moment alone with the city’s most impressive site.
In 1850 a new owner turned the noble residence into a locanda per viandanti, or travellers’ inn, called Locanda Patria. This was during a critical phase of the Risorgimento, the revolutionary period of Italian history that resulted in its unification in 1861, and patria means homeland. By 1997, Patria Palace had become Puglia’s first five-star hotel. It reopened in summer 2024 after undergoing a four-year renovation, and I’m here to see what the latest iteration of this Pugliese building holds.
One of the hotel’s 67 rooms
DARIO BORRUTO
Step inside the lobby and you are instantly struck by the building’s grandeur, with a towering coffered ceiling and walls adorned with lights by Venini, the 20th-century master of Murano glass. Elsewhere on the ground floor, through grand stone portals, I find a library and bar, as well as Barba’s, a cute little café and cocktail spot with seats outside on the piazza.
Over the next three floors there are 67 rooms. Of the ten suites, one is the hotel’s ultimate showpiece — with a gigantic 80 sq m rooftop terrace and Jacuzzi overlooking the upper quarter of Santa Croce’s façade, glowing peach at dawn and illuminated at night. Inside, its design is contemporary-classic, with a restored marble floor, luxurious velvet bed, a bathroom stocked with Diptyque products and a massive disco shower with remote-controlled coloured lights. As far as I can tell this is not an instrument for wellness but rather whimsy, in case you fancy bathing in the purple rain.
Ancient ruins in the centre of Lecce
After breakfast, the hotel has arranged a city tour with the guide Francesco by ArtWork, a local organisation that conserves the headline acts of the historical centre and offers different ways to experience the culture of Lecce — which, I am quickly learning, is rich and complex (£11; artworkcultura.it). Most people come to the Salento peninsula for laid-back beaches, but the region has Roman and Byzantine relics and was once the most important fief in the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples. This makes Lecce a great city break for art and history buffs.
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Wandering the narrow central streets, I’m struck (figuratively) not only by some astonishing feats of driving but also the sheer ubiquity of Lecce’s honey-coloured limestone, the locally mined petra leccesa used to build the city’s many baroque churches and palazzi. It’s particularly malleable and allows for great intricacy, which explains all the hyper-detailed friezes, door knockers and Juliet balconies held aloft by decorative carvings such as mini she-wolves (Lecce’s emblem, probably from its original Roman name Lupiae). We visit the Chiesa di San Matteo and Piazza del Duomo, where you can take a lift up the 72m bell tower for views over the city. In nearby Piazza Sant’Oronzo, there’s a 2nd-century Roman amphitheatre undergoing works that should be open again by spring.
The Roman amphitheatre is being renovated and is due to reopen in spring
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Some people call Lecce limestone “poor man’s marble”, just as others call Lecce itself the “Florence of the south”, which is both lazy and accurate because Lecce packs a serious punch when it comes to art and architecture. Yet it also has its own strong southern identity, often overlooked because northern Italy has for so long been considered the class act.
The country’s politics speak to this too. It wasn’t too long ago that Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister and head of a party formerly known as Lega Nord (North League), suggested more or less chopping off the bottom of Italy. But times are changing. Lega Nord has since rebranded to Lega, leaving its secessionist roots behind to become a nationalist party. And these days, in a fractured political landscape, the southern vote is more critical than ever.
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One of Lecce’s strongest cultural contributions and biggest exports is food. Shopfronts burst with fennel taralli, those little twisted breadsticks that come with your Aperol spritz; orecchiette (ear-shaped pasta); and sagne ncannulate, a twisted, roughly chopped tagliatelle. There are at least ten shops dedicated almost entirely to olive oil, the commodity that first brought money to the region and is still a boon today. In the evening, when I have dinner at Patria Palace’s rooftop restaurant, Atenze, a different local olive oil is paired with each dish. The tasting notes include “freshly cut grass”, “unripe banana” and “chicory”.
Sagne ncannulate pasta, a kind of roughly chopped tagiatelle
ALAMY
Patria’s executive chef, Cristiano Stamerra, has devised three, four and six-course tasting menus of modern, experimental Italian cuisine, with an à la carte option. I choose the latter, opting for a savoury pasticciotto with smoked burrata, prawns and salted custard to start, followed by spaghetti with garlic, chilli, lobster and summer black truffle. Both are insanely delicious.
In summer — and this is important because there is no pool at Patria Palace and temperatures reach 40C — the hotel partners with Mora Mora beach club, half an hour away near the town of San Foca on the Adriatic coast. In a region not known for its sand, Mora Mora is on a perfect sandy bay overlooked by a great seafood restaurant. The hotel offers several transfers a day.
Monique Rivalland on the balcony of Santa Croce Cathedral
But Lecce’s historical centre is small and tourist-heavy in summer, so you might do well to book a trip this spring, just as the temperature rises and the oleanders blossom and that iced caffe Leccese doesn’t give you the shivers. A weekend is long enough — this is a trip for sightseers and church enthusiasts — and Patria Palace is a great place to experience ancient history in modern luxury.
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Monique Rivalland was a guest of Patria Palace, which has B&B doubles from £290 (patriapalace.com). Fly to Brindisi
Guide to LecceWhat to see and do
A day pass gets you into all of Lecce’s baroque monuments, including the Duomo, with a trip in the lift to the city panoramic viewing platform; Santa Croce basilica; the church of San Matteo; and the Museum of Sacred Art (£9; chieselecce.it). But the most memorable way to experience the city’s baroque artistry is on a special night visit to Santa Croce, every Friday evening. It is unlike anything I’ve done before. In silence and darkness you stand in the middle and wait for spotlights on the spectacular dome, elaborate naves and Renaissance paintings — all synced to an ethereal soundscape (£16.50; chieselecce.it).
Where else to stay
On lively Via Giuseppe Libertini, Palazzo Zimara is another recently modernised aristocratic residence. Smaller than Patria Palace, it has chic, stripped-back interiors with faded Venetian plaster walls, and 17 rooms with vaulted ceilings and contemporary furniture. There’s a fine-dining restaurant called La Bocca in an elegant courtyard, and the Radino wine bar has a street-facing outdoor terrace (B&B doubles from £148, mains from £23; palazzozimara.it).
Pollicastro Boutique Hotel’s big-spender room has a bathroom leading to a private heated cave pool and waterfall (from £36). The converted 16th-century palazzo also has a charming roof garden for morning coffee or sundowners (B&B doubles from £138; pollicastroboutiquehotel.com).
Where to eat and drink
Caffe leccese, espresso with almond milk syrup
SHUTTERSTOCK
La Cucina di Mamma Elvira is a low-key osteria serving simple southern Italian cooking in a cute piazzetta. Try the capocollo (pork shoulder charcuterie) and orecchiettone (big orecchiette). It also has a wine bar with snacks (mains from £14; mammaelvira.com).
Organic and natural wines are big in Puglia these days, not least because that’s how many local wines have always been made. Outside the historic centre, through the Giuseppe Garibaldi public gardens, is L’Altro Vino Enoteca Naturale, where you can try and buy wines made within 30 miles of Lecce (bottles from £8; Via 95 Reggimento Fanteria, 74).
For fine dining, 3 Rane is a sophisticated spot with a few tables and a short menu that highlights new, exciting dishes with seasonal ingredients (mains from £10; fb.com/3raneristoro).
Great day trips
Sandwiched between the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic, Lecce is under an hour’s drive from some of the region’s best beaches. To the west, 35 minutes away, is the fortress town of Gallipoli with the 13th-century Byzantine castle and long stretch of sandy beach. To the east, you can spend a few hours exploring Otranto with a lunch stop at the marina. Or head to the classic beach town of Castro Marina, with its seafood trattorias and gelato shops. For picture-perfect coves that are great for swimming but have hardly any amenities, try Porto Miggiano, Cala D’Acquaviva and the natural pool at Marina Serra.
Have you visited Lecce? Share your experience in the comments
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