Lecce: A Museum, a Castle, and a Park

This morning was something of a quiet one. I visited three sights, a museum, the Museo Castromediano, a castle, the Castello di Carlo V, and a park, the Giardini Pubblici Giuseppe Garibaldi.

I enjoyed one, the museum, much more than I expected. Another, the castle, was a huge disappointment. The third, the park, was exactly what I expected and wanted, a pleasant way to intentionally squander some time.

Museum: Museo Castromediano

The Museo Castromediano is a great little museum. Although, I’m cognizant of the possibility that it being little might be a small part of the reason I thought it was great.

I enjoy interesting museums in small doses. In large enough doses, even the most compelling of museums eventually anaesthetize me. Museums that are particularly uninteresting can put me under in about 87 seconds, give or take a few seconds. So, if I ever need another surgery in my life I know where I want it done.

The museum is on three levels, with the upper levels spiralling around an open ground-level core.

Today, rows of folding chairs were set up in the core. The chairs faced a grand piano. The piano sat in front of an elaborately decorated, old, folding screen. I don’t know what was going to, or had, happened in that space. Or when it would or did happen.

I assume it was or would be either a piano recital or an exciting acrobatics show that involves bounding over the piano and the tall screen. It’s probably the former or some variation thereof.

The lower-level display items date mostly from 500 to 100 BCE. They started with large unadorned, grey or reddish clay storage vessels used for transporting goods. Most of those were recovered from the sea.

To give visitors more of a visceral link to the original context of these finds, this area of the museum contains two small aquariums with small artifacts sitting on the bottom among a few stones. A few tropical fish swim around in each aquarium. Live fish. How could a museum get any better?

This section also displays wood and stone anchors. (A stone base attached to wood pieces.)

The first level also contains several household items. Most are decorated, some quite elaborately from roughly the same era as the storage vessels.

One piece in this section captured my attention, not because of any archaeological or historical significance, but because I thought it was cute.

All of the signage in the museum that provides background information is in both Italian and English. But the placards listing the individual items are occasionally in both languages, but usually in Italian only. The placard on the item that particularly interested me was one of the latter.

I used the camera function of Google Translate to give me an English version. If the translation is correct, it’s, and I quote Google Translate here, “bottle es) in the form of a Harpy in overpainted ceramic.”

I don’t know. I just thought it was cute. I fear I’ll never be an archaeologist. I posted a head-on photo of it here. Being head-on, the picture doesn’t show you the bird’s tail on the back that completes the harpy (half-human, half-bird) figurine.

The upper levels of the museum contain more household items, along with some funereal objects of the same general vintage as the items on the lower level. But they also contain some much older artifacts. We’re talking about millennia, not centuries BCE here.

A Pebble in the Museum

The most prized possession of the older items dates from circa 10,000 BCE. It’s a pebble.

But it’s not just a pebble. One side has a spiral etched into it. The other side has one vertical line, with a tightly packed series of horizontal lines radiating off either side of the vertical line.

The English on the sign near the artifact says,

“The pebble, in steatite, comes from the Grotta delle Veneri (Parabita). It is about 10,000 years old and the result of the work of the hunter-gatherers of the late Palaeolithic/Mesolithic. The engraved marks continue to transmit, with an extraordinarily evocative power, archetypal and universal concepts. The spiral and fishbone patterns were used to ask divinities to give them fertility and regeneration with a clear reference to the female genitalia and with the circular movement of the spiral suggesting the cyclical rhythm of life.”

Sign in the Museo Castromediano

The etchings originated 12,000 or so years ago. No one from back then is still around to explain the meaning of the scratches to us. We know people from back then can’t still be alive because if they were they’d be running for the United States presidency.

So how do the archaeologists or whatever the specialty is that researches that kind of stuff, get all of that out of the scratches?

I mean, really, experts. You just told us that they are spiral and fishbone patterns. And that’s exactly what I saw even before I read the sign. But all of a sudden your mind is making a great leap to the circle of life, female genitalia, and pleading with the divine to get successfully knocked up? How do you know that’s where the scratcher was going with that? Maybe they just thought it was a pretty pattern.

In general, as I said, I found the museum more interesting and enjoyable than I was expecting. A good start to the day.

Castello di Carlo V

The museum was a good start to the day, but then I went to Lecce’s castle, Castello di Carlo V. What a disappointment.

The castle was built in the 12th century by the Normans. The Freds were supposed to help the Normans, but their backs were causing them problems and they couldn’t lift heavy objects. It happens.

The Spanish Holy Roman Emperor Carlo V enlarged it in the 16th century.

Wait. Wait one ever-loving minute. What?

The Spanish Holy Roman Emperor? Are you telling me the Romans just let Spaniards waltz in and take their top jobs? And I’ll bet the Spaniards weren’t sending Rome their best. They probably emptied their prisons and sent their criminals to Rome.

And it gets worse. According to Wikipedia, Charles was born in Flanders and he’d been Archduke of Austria, King of Spain, and Lord of the Netherlands. So not only was he a foreigner, but he was a globalist to boot. Shame!

Rome should have built walls to keep him and other foreigners out. Oh, wait. They did build big, thick, heavy protective walls. How can you trump that? I guess walls don’t work. Never mind.

(It occurs to me that if people find this entry long after Donald Trump is, thankfully, no longer even a bad memory, they won’t get the above references. If so, welcome future person! I hope the Trump nightmare worked out okay.)

Where was I? Oh, right. I was at the castle.

The Castello di Carlo V is a mostly unadorned, blocky, structure. On the inside, it looks primarily sand coloured. But the exterior looked more grey to me. Maybe that’s uncleaned soot buildup.

Based on some stairs I saw leading up there when I was inside the castle courtyard, I assume there are ramparts up top, but they don’t have crenellated walls. There is a cube that rises higher than the rest of the castle. Maybe you could call it a turret, but it lacked the cylindrical form and crenellations or other elements that provide a self-respecting turret with some panache. It was generally pretty plain.

The only non-straight-line sections of the castle are a few rather boring arches in a few places and some windows with rounded tops.

The only part of the castle that the public was allowed into today was the courtyard. And not even all of that. A couple of sections were closed off by construction fencing.

There’s also a small section of the courtyard that’s cordoned off with low railings. There are some shallow archaeological excavations inside that area.

There is normally a papier-mâché museum in the castle. But a sign at its entrance said it was closed for emergency maintenance. I hope they’re not going to replace the paper and go digital.

Another sign elsewhere in the courtyard said it’s possible to visit some other areas in the castle if you join a tour for a fee. I forget how much. And it didn’t matter how much. The tours run Wednesday through Sunday. Today is Tuesday. I leave Lecce tomorrow morning.

So, that’s another place that hates me and closes itself off when they hear I’m coming.

Entry to the courtyard is free. So I got my money’s worth.

Giardini Pubblici Giuseppe Garibaldi

Google Maps labels this space as a “giardini,” which translates into “gardens” in English. They call it a gardens. I’d call it a park. Whatever. You say tomato; I say broccoli.

It’s a roughly square park but with a somewhat rounded top. It’s area is about two blocks, by two blocks.

The park/gardens contains lots of trees, a few flowers, some grass, a fountain, two small playgrounds, a number of walkways, benches, statues, a series of stone busts on pedestals, and an old-looking gazebo-like structure with concrete or stone cylindrical columns and a domed roof with a cross on top and what appears to be tiles that form a primarily green pattern. So you tell me, is that a park or a gardens?

What does one do in a park/gardens? One strolls. One sits. One watches the world go by. I did all three and spent a considerable time in the park. Well, only a small part of the world went by. The park wasn’t at all crowded.

Lunch

I had lunch on a stone patio in the backyard of a restaurant. There were a few trees on the edges of the patio. Large, adjacent, square umbrellas kept the unclouded sun from blazing down on me and the other patrons on this slightly warm, entirely beautiful day in the neighbourhood. With the neighbourhood being the Lecce’s old town.

My meal consisted of a capricciosa pizza (tomato, capers, sautéed artichokes, sautéed mushrooms, cooked ham, olives, and basil), wine, sparkling water, and an espresso. It was yummy.

Again I lingered over lunch, spending a little over an hour on the patio eating and drinking at a civilized pace. It helps to have stuff to do on my phone, like type some of these words, to slow me down. I normally eat far too quickly when I’m alone.

I’m not looking forward to getting back home and wolfing down whatever I’ve got in my fridge, roughly cooked, if cooking is appropriate, for my meals. I have just over a week of this trip left. I’m going to try to do my best to enjoy it.

What, me enjoy something? We’ll see, dear.