Lecce (transcribed directly from my road notebook, hence the incomplete sentences and uncharacteristic poetic license)

We enter through Porta San Biagio, a columned gate with many baroque decorations. It was built specifically for a visit from the king. We walk down to the church of Saint Matthew, tall and elaborate, set so the sun hits it. Past the church of Saint Claire, onto wider trafficked streets, to the Chair, the throne of an ancient king who was once bunkered inside the city. There is an amphitheatre, with fallen arches and rusted gates. Only half of it has been excavated, because the Pope refuses to let the main road to the church be rerouted. The stone is soft. So soft, I can cut it with my fingernail. This is why they redid the city in stone, covering every wall with cherubs and saints, flowers and animals and scrolls. Superfluous decoration.
The first patron saint of Lecce was the virgin martyr Irene. Her church is tall and white and full of evening sun. People have lit many candles inside, and there is a mother with a child begging for change in the shadow of one of the monolithic doors.
Here in the piazza Duomo, where the highest priests live and children set for a life of religious service go to school, there is a wedding just beginning. The bride and groom are beautiful, and very picturesque, kneeling before the alter. Tourists still wander in and out of the back of the church, flashing pictures with their cell phones.
We found a little piazza with glass windows in the ground, showing steps and walls leading down. There is a whole city under the one we’ve seen. People used to walk through the streets there, looking up to the sky where there are now new basements and roads. We’ve built our houses on the roofs of our ancestors.