The Patrons
Oronzo, Giusto and Fortunato
Santi Oronzo, Giusto e Fortunato are Lecce's listed patrons, celebrated on 26 August. Sant'Oronzo's feast is the city's great annual celebration.
— Castellesi
CASTELLESI COMUNE
Lecce,
Puglia
The archive capital of a province that once covered three modern ones.
Lecce is the capital of the Salento, built in a soft golden limestone that carvers could work like wood — which is why its baroque is unlike anything else in Italy.
For a researcher it is the key to the whole south-east: Lecce was the capital of the Terra d'Otranto , a single province that lasted some seven centuries and covered what are now three.
The Province
Terra d'Otranto
For most of the emigration period, modern Lecce, Brindisi and Taranto belonged to one province: Terra d'Otranto. Provincial records for all three territories were therefore originally created under Lecce.
The Landmark
Basilica di Santa Croce
The Basilica di Santa Croce is one of Lecce's defining baroque churches. For family research, however, the relevant parish may belong to one of several dioceses across the Salento rather than to Lecce's archdiocese.
Did you know?
ONE ARCHIVE SERVED THREE PROVINCES
Lecce held the whole Terra d'Otranto
Lecce's archive is the direct successor to the Archivio provinciale di Terra d'Otranto, which covered modern Lecce, Brindisi and Taranto. Taranto split in 1923 and Brindisi in 1927, but much older documentation was created and long held here.
LA PARLATA
How they speak
Italian is standard. Local speech may include Apulian varieties, with Salentino varieties in the south. Local speech also includes Griko in the Grecià Salentina villages.
Terra d'Otranto before the split
Lecce was Roman Lupiae , with an amphitheatre that still sits half-excavated in the main square, and it grew under the Normans as the seat of a county.
Its transformation came in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the local pietra leccese — a fine limestone soft enough to carve in extraordinary detail and hardening on exposure — allowed a style of baroque that has no real parallel. Santa Croce and the Piazza del Duomo are its high points, and the whole centre is built of it.
The city was the capital of the Terra d'Otranto , which stretched from Taranto to the tip of the Salento and included Brindisi — one administrative unit from the medieval period until the twentieth century.
The Salento itself has a distinct history: Greek-speaking under Byzantium and after, with the Grecìa Salentina villages preserving Griko to this day, and a strong tradition of pizzica and the tarantismo that scholars studied here in the 1950s.
Taranto left the province in 1923, Brindisi in 1927.
Postcards from Lecce
Wear Lecce
WANT TO SEE LECCE REPRESENTED?
Castellesi hasn't made anything for this place yet. Requests are how we decide which comuni come next — every one is read, and the places people ask for are the places that get made.
REQUEST LECCE →Where this
belongs
belongs
PROVINCIA DI LECCE
Discover the beauty, culture and traditions of Lecce and its remarkable comuni.
EXPLORE LECCE →REGIONE PUGLIA
From the mountains to the sea, Puglia is a region of history, flavor and soul.
EXPLORE PUGLIA →From the passenger index
At least 579 people who gave Lecce as their home are recorded by name among Italian arrivals in the United States — each with the ship they sailed on and the day they landed.
A floor, not a total. The index covers arrivals through 1912, holds nothing between May 1907 and December 1911, and many passengers were written down with no home town at all. Where a name is there, it is there with its record.
Have Orso look for your family →Ready to visit
Baroque in golden stone
Getting there
The nearest major airport is Brindisi Airport.
Lecce is one of the most immediately pleasurable cities in the south — compact, walkable, and built entirely of a stone that turns gold in late light.
For a descendant it is also the natural base for the whole Salento. The Grecìa Salentina villages are half an hour east, Otranto and Gallipoli on either coast within an hour, and the tip of the peninsula at Santa Maria di Leuca not much further.
And if your family were from the Taranto or Brindisi country, this is where their older records were created — which makes Lecce worth a stop even when it is not the family's town.
What to see
Basilica di Santa Croce — the high point of Lecce baroque.
Piazza del Duomo — the enclosed cathedral square, best at night.
Piazza Sant'Oronzo and the Roman amphitheatre — the ancient city beneath the modern one.
The cartapesta workshops — the papier-mâché tradition.
La Grecìa Salentina — the Griko-speaking villages east of the city.
Otranto and Gallipoli — the two coasts of the Salento.
Your family's parish — and establish the diocese, which may not be Lecce's.
Family history
Where the records are
Archives and registers
Lecce's archive is the successor of the Terra d'Otranto provincial archive, so it reaches beyond the modern province.
Browse the Lecce civil registers on Antenati
Civil status 1809–1941 — second copies from the comuni of the province, with citizenship registers from 1866.
antenati.cultura.gov.itThe Lecce and Taranto military district
The archive holds the Distretto militare di Lecce e di Taranto, classes 1844–1925, as a single joint fond — which is why a Tarantino conscript of those years is found here rather than at Taranto.
antenati.cultura.gov.itBrowse the Taranto civil registers on Antenati
For comuni of the Taranto circondario, whose material was transferred out of Lecce after 1947.
antenati.cultura.gov.itRelated places
Keep exploring
The journey does not end at the boundary of one comune. The province, the region and the neighbouring towns often hold the rest of the picture.
Your Roots. Their Story. Your Place.
Lecce is more than a place on a map. It is a part of you.
FIND YOUR COMUNE →