Darya In Italy: September 2011

Friday, September 30, 2011

Vacanza, Ostuni

We have been back in the US for almost two weeks now, and I still haven't finished sharing about our vacation in August. I am getting really behind!

After leaving Lecce we stopped in two small towns on our way to Trani, the first one is called Ostuni. Ostuni is known as the "white city", because all the buildings are white. The ones that are not soon will be, because the mayor passed an ordinance saying that all buildings have to be painted white. Ostuni is on a small hill overlooking the sea, and has been inhabited since the stone age. The view is beautiful! All of the streets are small, many with staircases, and arches connecting buildings. It was a great place to stop for a few hours.

The dark blue strip in the background is the sea

Small streets

Small doors

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Vacanza, Lecce

Lecce was our next stop after Otranto. Lecce is to Baroque architecture as Florence is to Renaissance architecture, and is nicknamed "The Florence of the South". The amount of intricate detail in every piece of the architecture is exquisite! Lecce was inhabited by Greeks at the time of the Trojan War and later was a very important city for the Romans. Lecce is much bigger than Otranto, but easily walkable in a few hours. We got there in the evening and went to a nice restaurant the owner of the apartment we rented had recommended. Some of the buildings are amazingly well lit at night and really show off all the details of the architecture. We walked around for a while after dinner, but were exhausted and had to finish our tour the next morning. Everywhere you looked there was some kind of decoration or architectural detail to see. Beautiful balconies, ornamentation on doors, everything looked so rich it could be a little overwhelming at times, but you can really appreciate what it would take to create these pieces of art.