A house that hides two thousand years of history under its floor
In 2001 Luciano Faggiano, a Lecce businessman, bought a building in the historic centre to open a trattoria, and began work to fix a blocked toilet drain. Digging under the floor, he and his sons discovered first a cavity, then an underground room, then another, and so on: what was supposed to be a week's repair turned into years of excavation, which revealed, layer upon layer, almost two thousand years of history of the city.
Today the building is the Museo Faggiano, a private museum where you can walk down through the centuries: Messapian and Roman tombs and grain stores, cisterns, an early medieval chapel, a sixteenth century convent of Franciscan nuns, an underground passage that may have been used by the Knights Templar, with a cross carved into the wall, and medieval frescoes. Thousands of objects were found, from ceramics and coins to glass, pipes and jewellery, displayed in the rooms. Glass floors let you see the lower levels, and from the top of the tower there is a view over the roofs of Lecce. The trattoria was never opened, and the story became famous around the world as an example of what lies beneath the surface of an Italian city.
Tip: the museum is small but fascinating; allow about an hour. It is in Via Ascanio Grandi, near the Porta San Biagio.
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