Took a longish drive from Bari to Lecci which was aproximately 150 km away . This took about 1 hr 45 mins to drive . This approximately the same distance from KL to Melaka. Rahiyah drove the first leg. She is much more competent than me so drives much faster than me . I drove within the speed limit of below 90km per hr. Italian drivers drove much , much faster than that, breaking all the speed limits!

Itis basically a dual carriage highway from Bari to Lecce.

As usual we have to park the car elsewhere from ZTL zones . We had to walk 10 mins from the car park to the historic centrio .Lecce is a town renown for Baroque architecture.

Lecce is known as Florence of the south. This is because of the Baroque architecture of the town’s buildings . We walked around as usual and we found there was a Roman Amphiteartre .

About 2,000 years ago, Lecce was called Lupiae and was an important Roman city in Salento. The amphitheatre was built probably during the Augustan period — roughly around the end of the 1st century BC / beginning of the 1st century AD — although archaeologists still debate the exact date. It was later enlarged or improved under Emperor Hadrian. It wasn’t a threatre for plays. This was the Roman equivalent of a huge entertainment stadium:

Gladiator fights
Wild-animal hunts (venationes)
Public spectacles and games

It was enormous: about 102 × 82 metres could fit with room for roughly 12,000 -14,000 people. What is seen now  is about one -third of the original amphitheatre. The rest is literally still underneath Piazza Sant’Oronzo and the surrounding buildings. The Romans cleverly carved parts of it directly into Lecce’s soft local stone, including passages and areas beneath the seating.

So when you’re standing there looking at the exposed arena, you’re actually looking at a tiny window into a much larger Roman stadium buried beneath modern Lecce. And look closely at the stonework and the curved seating — you can still see the logic of how 12,000+ people would have entered, found their section and moved around without everybody piling through one doorway. Very Roman: engineering first, spectacle second.  Thought all of this is very interesting . I did like the town . It’s not too small and had plenty of tourists.

I had a good gelato here hehehe.

We also had lunch at a quite tasteful cafe . The pasta ( paccheri = tubular pasta, so many different types of pasta so confusing to know the names ) with promodoro ( tomato sauce) was tasty . We also had a local rustico leccese which is a local pastry filled with bechamel and tomato . That was good too .

I drove back to Bari with Rahiyah.By the time we arrived at our accomodation , it was 8.30 pm.  Oh, I had a mishap as drove into a lane that was meant for in coming cars so got honked at la. But I had to reverse the car to get back to the right lane. One or two drivers honked and indicated that we were in the wrong lane .