Lecce

The masterpiece of Lecce Baroque, its front carved without a gap with monsters, fruit, angels and beasts that hold your eye for a long time. Only a stone this soft could be cut so deep. It took close to 150 years to finish.

A closed square with a single entrance, ringed on every side by the cathedral, its bell tower, the bishop's palace and the seminary. The gate, they say, was once shut at night. After sunset the lights come on and the stone turns the colour of honey.

An amphitheatre found in the early 1900s under Piazza Sant'Oronzo in the very centre, and only half dug out. The other half is still buried beneath the surrounding buildings. Looking down from the square's railing needs no ticket.

In the early 2000s a family dug up their floor to fix a blocked drain and found layer on layer: Messapian tombs, a Roman granary, traces of a medieval convent. The house opened as a museum as it was; glass floors and narrow stairs lead down through the levels.

A Lecce craft of modelling saints from paper pulp and glue, pressing robe folds with hot irons; churches that could not afford stone used it instead of marble. A museum sits in the Castle of Charles V, and old-town workshops let you watch the making.

The cathedral of a walled seaside town east of Lecce, its whole floor a 12th-century mosaic Tree of Life that even shows elephants and King Arthur. The bones of some 800 townspeople killed by Ottoman troops in 1480 are stacked behind glass in the right chapel.

A port on the Ionian side whose old town sits entirely on a small island joined by a bridge. A lap of the walkway along the walls brings you round to face the sunset over the sea. The fish market by the bridge opens raw sea urchins in the morning.

A round natural pool bored into the rocks of the Roca Vecchia coast, linked to open water by an underground channel, so it stays clear. People leap from the rim; if you do not know the depth, do not jump. Messapian wall ruins lie right beside it.

The very tip of the heel, where the Adriatic and Ionian are said to meet. From the lighthouse beside the sanctuary on the cape, some claim the sea shows two different colours. The sea caves along the shore are seen only from small boats.

On the Adriatic shore east of Lecce, white limestone stacks and arches rise from the sea. You enter the water from the rocks rather than a sandy beach, so water shoes are needed. An early morning start finds the rocks almost empty.

A triumphal arch raised in 1548 in honour of Emperor Charles V on the old north wall, carved with his double-headed eagle. The old road to Naples started here, hence the name. An obelisk faces it across the small square in front.

A church founded in 1180 by Tancred, the Norman count of Lecce, now inside the city cemetery, so you walk between tombs to reach it. A baroque front was added in 1716, yet the central doorway still frames the original Norman carving.

Thirty minutes' drive west of Lecce, on the Ionian side, pine forest reaches a rocky shore. Leave the car and a woodland path drops in about 15 minutes to a small cove. Cold fresh water seeps up through the seabed, keeping the sea chilly in high summer.

A 14th-century church in Galatina, south of Lecce, its walls and vaults covered in biblical frescoes. The town was the heart of tarantism, the belief that the bitten were cured by dancing, and on 29 June, St Paul's day, they gathered at its chapel.

A bauxite pit abandoned in the 1970s, where groundwater rose to form a green lake between walls of red earth. It sits a short way south of Otranto toward the coast. The banks crumble, so stay up top rather than climbing down to the water.