Piazza del Duomo
Walk in and the square closes around you like a stage set. That is no accident: Piazza del Duomo was once the Corte del Vescovado, the inner courtyard of a 13th-century bishop's citadel with a wall of its own, its north end shut by a bronze gate. All around you stand the pieces of that complex: the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta with its bell tower, the bishop's palace and the seminary. To this day the square belongs to the Diocese of Lecce, not to the city.
The look you see dates from 1659, when Bishop Luigi Pappacoda asked the Lecce architect Giuseppe Zimbalo, nicknamed 'lo Zingarello', to rebuild the cathedral in Lecce Baroque. Zimbalo kept the Romanesque floor plan, and Pappacoda consecrated the new church himself in 1670. The surrounding buildings were reworked in the same style, and the cathedral received a 'false' facade, a showpiece front turned toward the square for effect.
A century later Bishop Alfonso Sozy Carafa brought in the architect Emanuele Manieri. He knocked down the old entrance walls and put up twin palaces with propylaea, gateway structures that carried the hinges of new gates and set up your arrival like a theatre entrance. Manieri also gave the seminary its heavy, sober front, a deliberate calm next to the cathedral. The gates stayed until the late 19th century; only when they were removed did the old courtyard take the name Piazza del Duomo.
The cathedral and bell tower are on the same combined ticket as Basilica di Santa Croce, so if you plan to see the basilica inside, it makes sense to look in here as well. From the square it is 420 m, about 6 min, to the Roman Theatre.
_01.jpg){kind=link}
