Museo Faggiano

Luciano Faggiono is a wierdly unlucky man. In 2000 he bought a building on 56 Via Ascanto Grandi with the dream of opening a trattoria, but before long there was a sewage pipe that was causing trouble so he had to cut open the floor to replace it. What he accidentally uncovered was a treasure trove of history, underground corridors, escape tunnels, tombs, a nunnery.

The earliest traces are of the Messapi people who lived in Lecce before it was a Greek territory (part of Magna Gracia, “Greater Greece”) in the 5th century BCE then to the Romans to the Middle Ages when it was a Knights Templar home (1000 to 1200 AD) with carvings on the walls through to the Renaissance when it became a convent of Franciscan Nuns (1609). All in this one building.

“Whenever you dig a hole centuries of history come out” he says.

He turned it into a museum and for €5 you can explore it. I asked the guide if he ever got to open his trattoria. She said he eventually purchased a spot on the same street but as soon as he opened it the pandemic happened.