The architectural landscape recalls the Greek town for the predominance of the white house in lime, without a roof (only with an attic) especially in the countryside and on the coast. However, the historical centres are characterized by the typical baroque of Lecce, a Spanish inheritance of the Plateresque. Compared with the Baroque of the rest of Italy, it isn’t adorned with the pictorial overabundance of the interiors and it makes the external façades of churches and buildings sort of sculpt tapestries. A leading role has played in this, the local  “pietra leccese” a soft and malleable stone of a warm yellow-rose colour.

The typical structure of the salentine historical centres is characterized by a mass of white narrow streets with the walls painted in quicklime on which stand out the high colours of the frames that alternate with the noble palaces and the churches baroque age in not worked stone. Typical of these places is the courtyard house of Arabian origins, common also in Sicily. A lot of alleys, in fact, are characterized by something that at first sight seem to be other perpendicular alleys, but that are actually, blind alleys that end not many metres further on. On this urban space, defined courtyard, (from the Latin cohorte “ space that includes the vegetable garden), overlook the doors and the windows of many houses. In this way, the courtyard becomes  a space of common life, a sort of enlarged family, a “living room” where, years ago, a lot of families would live most of their day chatting, padding and helping each other in the housework.

In the courtyard, of course, you will always find the common “pila”, a sort of stone washbasin with a carved part (stricaturu) used to wring out the laundry. In some areas the courtyards are even closed by a big door (mignano) that seems to be the main entrance of a house but, once opened, is only the entrance to this multi-familiar space.

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