Lecce: 2 Museums, a Theatre, and an Amphitheatre

Unlike yesterday, when I had only a little time to explore Lecce, today I had a lot of time. All day, in fact. (And tomorrow. And tomorrow’s tomorrow.)

I spent the morning in Lecce’s old town visiting two museums, a theatre, and an amphitheatre. I viewed the theatre and amphitheatre only from outside of them, which is as close as the public can get these days.

Andiamo. (Let’s go.)

Museo Faggiano

The entrance to the Museo Faggiano is unassuming, just the small door to an old building, which at one time was a convent. I don’t know the building’s vintage, but I’m confident we’re talking about multiple centuries old.

That is, it’s unassuming except for the blowup of a New York Times article from April 15th, 2015 about the story behind the Museo Faggiano. And what an interesting story it is.

Up until 2000, it was just a building that someone named Luciano Faggiano bought with the plan of opening a trattoria in Lecce’s old town. But before he could open the trattoria he had to fix the toilet that kept backing up.

He dug under the floor looking for the sewage pipe. What he found changed his plans. He unearthed some ruins and ancient artifacts.

Recognizing the archaeological significance, the Faggiano family sponsored a more complete excavation and dug down back through time, from Templar symbols, to Roman crypts, and back to an old floor believed to be of the Messapic period of the 5th century BCE.

Some of the excavated rooms sit on top of small deeper excavated areas topped with glass. The woman at the entrance promised me that it was safe to walk on the glass. And she encouraged me to do so when she saw I was hesitant.

Rooms above the modern street level contain retrieved artifacts. And one of the rooms honours some discoveries in caves in the region.

Above that is a small terrace and an “observation turret.” I don’t know if all of the surrounding buildings were there when the turret was built, but today it’s not much above the top of those densely packed buildings, so there’s not much to observe.

Upon paying the five euro entry fee, I was given a sheaf of pages bound in plastic sleeves. The pages provide information on the rooms, cisterns, escape route tunnels, tombs, walls, floors and artifacts in the museum. Each noted item had a number that matched the numbers affixed to the walls and floors.

I got to choose which language I wanted the information in. I opted for English because if I chose any other language the best possible use I could put the pages to would be a manual fan. And it isn’t overly warm today.

Just think. If the toilet hadn’t regularly backed up, I might have dined at a trattoria there rather than being able to visit such an interesting museum. What a shame that would have been, except for the dining part. I like dining.

Museo Teatro Romano

There’s an ancient Roman theatre in Lecce, just hanging around in the old town doing nothing. That’s the theatre I mentioned in the title of and introduction to this post. And, immediately beside the theatre is a small museum.

I found the museum a bit confusing. It’s mostly about the Roman theatre beside it, but it’s also about Roman theatres in southern Italy in general.

And there is some information on Greek tragedies and comedies. I imagine they were performed in the Roman theatre back in the day; the really, really old day. But I wasn’t entirely clear on that. In that section of the museum, some large, stone masks from Greek plays were on display. Based on the expressions on the masks’ faces, I think they were for the tragedies. None of them looked like they were enjoying themselves. Maybe they were just really bad comedies.

The information panels in the museum were in both Italian and English, but I don’t think I got as much information as Italian speakers.

I know that a French translation of English text is almost always longer. I know this because I used to write marketing literature for a living. Some of it had to be translated into French. Because I’m old, a lot of my brochures and other writing ended up in print even if there was also an online version. The French translators often had to edit out some of the content for the print version because it wouldn’t fit in the allotted space.

I don’t know if Italian writing is similarly longer than English, but even if that’s the case, I don’t think that explains the discrepancies between the two languages in the museum. On most of the panels, the Italian looks about four or five times longer than the English, despite using the same size font. That seems to me to be too much of a difference to be explained solely by a difference in language lengths.

On a few panels, the Italian had two or three sections, to English’s one or two. That definitely can’t be explained by any inherent wording length differences between the languages. Harumph.

There’s a fee for the museum, but it’s only three euros. So I guess it would be hard to justify asking for a reduction due to the lesser amount of English.

Roman Theatre of Lecce

The Roman Theatre in Lecce is kind of hidden away among the buildings of Lecce’s old town. I accidentally stumbled on it yesterday during my stroll. I didn’t mention it then because I figured I’d be taking a closer look sometime during my stay in Lecce. If you’ve read this far, you know I was right about that.

They don’t seem to let people into the Roman theatre these days, but there are two places to view it. One is from a viewing area inside the Museo Teatro Romano. That position is on a small catwalk balcony, a little back from the stage, looking straight out at the semicircular seating area.

Because the viewing area is at the modern street level, I looked down on the theatre. (That’s the way ancient stuff is. You have to dig down to get at it. By ancient, I obviously mean more ancient than I am. I know. I know. It’s hard to believe anything predates me, right?)

The viewing area just has a railing, so it provides an unobstructed view of the theatre.

Lecce’s Roman theatre appears to my untrained eye to be in reasonably good shape. It has some moss growing on some of the seats and a few shrubs growing up from bits of the floor, but other than that, the seating area looks to be largely intact.

The other viewing spot is a free one from one of the small streets in Lecce’s old town. That’s where I saw it yesterday.

That spot is on the side of the theatre. You have to look through a wrought iron fence, but the fence is just narrow vertical bars spaced close enough that no human could squeeze through, but wide enough that it barely obscures the view.

I said “no human could squeeze through” because I saw a cat down there. The fence doesn’t seem to impede them.

Roman Amphitheatre of Lecce

Not only does Lecce have a Roman theatre, but it also has a Roman amphitheatre. Unlike the theatre, the amphitheatre is not hidden away. It’s right out in a large and lively public square.

At present, the public can’t go into the amphitheatre. But I could get a good view of it from around a couple of the sides.

According to my guidebook, the amphitheatre is a perfect horseshoe shape, but some of it is still buried under the square.

The views from some spots around the amphitheatre were obscured by construction hoarding. The signage on the hoarding was exclusively in Italian, but I think Lecce might be building a museum associated with the amphitheatre. Maybe they’ll let people into the amphitheatre at some point after the construction. I don’t know.

I have a feeling that Lecce, or at least its old town section, is the sort of city where if you dig down anywhere you’ll uncover ancient history. I find that kind of cool, to use the archaeological technical term for it.

Lunch

I had a very nice lunch in the old town of Lecce consisting of a mixed salad, gnocchi with clams and pesto sauce, wine, and an espresso. It was all delicious.

I lingered over lunch even longer than usual today, almost two hours. Only maybe half of that resulted from the penchant I’ve developed for lingering over lunches while travelling. The rest of it was explained by what was among the slowest service I’ve ever seen. But, I’m here for three days. The restaurant was enjoyable. And, like I said, in my old age I’ve grown to enjoy long lunches when travelling. So, pazienza, pazienza. (“Patience, patience” if Google Translate isn’t lying to me.)

More to come this afternoon. Stay tuned.