The feast of San Oronzo in Lecce
Lecce at the end of August is fiercely hot. The sun beats down and bounces off the white limestone that has been carved into all manner of human and bestial figures, embellished by curlicues and fronds, in the manner of the high baroque. Lecce’s limestone is soft like Malta’s, and lends itself easily to carving, which is one of the reasons for all this flamboyance – though the fashion for baroque reached Lecce as late in the day as it did Malta. Walking through the bleached streets is like trailing through Haż-Żebbuġ at the same time of day and at the same time of year – a ‘mad dogs and Englishmen’ kind of thing to do. But this is not an early afternoon ghost-town of empty streets and houses shuttered against the ultraviolet rays and ultra-violent thieves. Everybody is out and about, and busy creating a racket. It’s the feast of San Oronzo, the city’s patron saint – and in this land of patronage they are making sure that he gets the accolade he deserves.
San Oronzo, a name that has no English equivalent, receives his tribute over three days from 24 to 26 August. The main streets of Lecce and its squares are en fete; the coloured lights are out and the ornate bandstand, painted a pale green and decorated with bulbs of many hues, stands in the largest of the squares waiting for the evening, when the processional brass band comes out to play. Beneath the ramparts of the castle, where a succession of Frankish, Lombard and Aragonese dukes sought refuge in between killing each other, there are ranks of open-air stalls, each one of them selling some kind of local produce or delicacy. Tubs of lime-cured olives fight for space with basins of pistachio nuts and snails. Elderly men stand guard over vast cauldrons of whitebait cooked in saffron. Whole young pigs – porchette – are laid out and sliced to order. Sun-dried tomatoes, a speciality of the region, fill basket after basket. Hard cheeses, cured meats, the local pasta – made of hard wheat and greyish-white, all sold by boys and men who are keen to return home with as little stock as possible. Beans are kept moist under a stream of water, and round a corner there is something that is not indigenous at all – slices of coconut, chilled in iced water. The main attraction is the man who is making almond and hazelnut bars with caramelised sugar.
He ladles the boiling mass of sugar and nuts onto a stainless steel table, and with hands that must be covered in elephant hide rather than human skin, he spins it and smoothes it, until he has something that looks like a Mr Tom bar designed for a giant. This he breaks, using a very sharp knife, into smaller bars that are wrapped in plastic and sold to a queue of customers.
Like Saint George of the dragon, San Oronzo is one of those saints over whose very existence a large question-mark is posed. Yet the people have made him real and light candles to him in the churches – curiously, the main church is not dedicated to him; his church is a little one – and so real he is, then. He is supposed to have been a patrician born in Rudiae, a city close to Lupiae (which grew into present-day Lecce), and was 11 years old when Christ was crucified. His father, or so the myth has it, was a treasurer to the Roman emperor, and Oronzo succeeded him in this post. While he was out hunting one day with his nephew Fortunato, he met the man who went on to become San Giusto, who had been asked by the apostle Paul to deliver some of his letters to Rome. Oronzo was impressed and converted to Christianity, beginning to wander and preach with Giusto. His bosses were not taken with his behaviour, and ordered him to pay public homage to Jove, which he refused. He was whipped and locked up with Giusto. Once out of prison, Giusto, Oronzo and the loyal Fortunato escaped to Corinth, where Paul was in residence. Paul named Oronzo bishop of Rudaie, and Fortunato his successor. They returned home, only to have the agents of the fiercely anti-Christian Emperor Nero catch up with them. And the rest, as they say, is history – or legend.
So San Oronzo is a local boy, which makes sense in the patronage system of southern Italy. Yet Lecce’s devotion to him dates back no earlier than 1656, the year in which most of its people were somehow spared from the mortal plague that was racing through the towns, cities and countryside in the rest of the territory of the Kingdom of Naples, of which Lecce formed part. According to the revelations of a mystic, for it was then as it is now, this was nothing short of a miracle, and the miracle was brought about by the intercession of a full five local saints: Oronzo and his friend Giusto, Fortunato, Petronella and Venera, she who has lent her name to a suburb of Ħamrun.
As it is in politics, so it is with religious devotion. He who proves himself worthy by dishing out favours gets the support of his constituents. The previous incumbent of the role of patron saint, Saint Irene, was unceremoniously dumped from the affections of the people of Lecce, and San Oronzo was voted in instead. Why they chose him and not any one of the other five remains a mystery, but his effigy in bronze was hauled up high on a column and there it remains today, a landmark and the subject of many a postcard. The square which he surveys from his high perch was renamed San Oronzo, and Saint Irene was put out to grass. In an early example of lack of regard for ancient heritage, the column itself was fashioned from stones that came from the dismantling of the nearby Brindisi gate on the Appian Way, the Roman road that ran the length of Italy. As a concession to the part that they played in warding off the plague, San Giusto and San Fortunato are also given a brief nod in the festivities, though saints Petronella and Venera are given a backseat in the proceedings, if they are mentioned at all. Such is the fate of women in the southern Mediterranean.
After dark, Lecce is ablaze with coloured lights and a fireworks display to close the proceedings. The band proceeds round the main streets and square, then retires to the bandstand, where it plays for most of the night, drowned in great part by the loud conversation of the great throng. The food-stalls are still doing a roaring trade, but now they have been joined by the ubiquitous Asians, selling strings of beads and knick-knacks, who are a feature of markets all over Europe. They might seem odd and out of place in this farthest part of remotest Italy, but their presence brings the market closer to the fairs of medieval times, when roving merchants from all parts of the known world would move from city to city and town to town on the European mainland, hawking their wares, displaying wonders from far lands, and drawing crowds of girls and women with their baubles. The man from an exotic land with his glittering necklaces would have been a magnet for women at a fair 500 years ago as he is at the feast of San Oronzo in Lecce today.
At lunchtime, those who have come in from the surrounding towns for the feast don’t bother driving back home to eat. The trattorie are packed, with standing-and-waiting room only. The porchette stands are now decorated only with skeletal remains. The dishes of the moment are the feast-day specials: roast cockerel and melanzanata di San Oronzo. The festivities had begun with the famous Cavalcata di Sant’ Oronzo, an enfilade of priests and city councillors, followed by the cavalry. Banners and canopies made of dark velvet heavily embroidered in gold make this a rich pageant that is somewhat undermined by the grey suits of the councillors. One longed for the more appropriate costumes of 17th-century burghers, but while tradition has kept the procession the same, contemporary fashion in men’s clothes has wrought havoc with style.
Lecce – once Roman Lupiae – was fought over and controlled in turn by Byzantine, Lombard, Saracen, Norman, Frankish and Aragonese forces. It is a melting-pot of different ethnicities. In Puglia, there remain communities where ancient (Doric) Greek is still spoken – the remnants of the original settlers when the region formed part of pre-Roman Magna Graecia.
In other villages, where Albanian families settled in the 15th century after crossing the water from their country, the dialect is a remnant of Albanian. Lecce’s period of glory, its efflorescence, came in the 17th and 18th centuries, when most of the city’s core was rebuilt. Grand palaces line entire streets, their vast doorways surmounted by caryatids and Moors, dragons and creatures of the deep, twisted and pulled out of stone cut from nearby quarries. These palaces, which up until the mid-20th century would have housed a single extended family in separate apartments, are now given over to up to 20 families, and the vast apartments divided into small flats. Because no one has the time, interest or money to maintain the communal areas, the façades, doors, and once-splendid entrance halls and stairways are falling into disrepair, crumbling away. This does not put off an army of visitors, armed with cameras. Lecce, we are being told, is the new Tuscany – but it is very different. You might as well be in another country.
The food of Lecce
The Salentine plain on which Lecce is built is surprisingly fertile, despite the appearance of shrivelling aridity. Wheat and other grains are grown in great abundance, supplying much of the rest of Italy’s requirements. The cuisine of Puglia is the quintessential Mediterranean diet – the one, that is, that predates the arrival of potatoes, squashes, and tomatoes. It is built on olive oil, wheat, beans, wild vegetables, leaves and pulses. Pasta is made from hard wheat or from semolina, usually in the shape of the omnipresent orecchiette, or ‘little ears’. It is rough-textured and tastes and feels unusual to those accustomed to the pasta of other regions. It is tossed with wild or cultivated greens and olive oil, and is never served al dente but boiled to softness.
Vegetables, too, are cooked until they are slippery-soft. By far the most popular leafy green is broccoli raab – cime di rapa – which is not sold or used in Malta at all. They look very much like the leafy tops of kohlrabi (ġidra) but are far more tender and edible. They are boiled and mixed in with pasta, or served with meat. The classic Lecce dish is orecchiette con cime di rapa.
Wheels of rough bread look like Maltese bread, but taste not at all like it. Pieces of olives are kneaded into dough to make excellent little loaves which are served at the start of a meal, and which fill the windows of bakeries. Frisedda is a ring-shaped loaf that is baked twice. Fava beans are made into soups, salads and contorni. Rice is baked with potatoes and seafood, and sea urchins are served up with pasta or eaten straight out of the shell. The Apulians have been shepherds and goatherds since ancient times, never cattle-herders, and their dietary preference has remained with lamb, mutton, kid and goat, cooked with onions, olive oil and herbs. Many cheeses of the area are made from sheep’s milk, but the vast majority of Apulian cheeses are made from cow’s milk. Most of them are eaten shortly after they are made, but others are aged until they have attained a rich pungency. Boscaiola del gargano is cheese laced with chilli pepper. Burrata is a type of mozzarella made from cow’s milk not water-buffalo’s, stuffed with cream and eaten within 24 hours of being made. Burrino is fresh hard cheese with a buttery heart, tied in pairs like saddle-bags, and eaten with celery to round off a meal. There are some cured meats, like salsiccia di Lecce, which is a sausage made of pork and beef with some bacon that hasn’t been smoked, flavoured with cinnamon, cloves and lemon zest. Sanguinaccio di Lecce is a sausage made from blood and brains, usually eaten boiled or grilled.
The best place to stay in Lecce is the Patria Palace Hotel, which is a member of The Luxury Collection. It is hard by the Cathedral of Santa Croce, the most famous piece of baroque architecture in Lecce.
Patria Palace Hotel, Piazzetta Gabriele Riccardi, 73100 Lecce Tel 0039 0832 245 111 • info@patriapalacelecce.com • www.luxurycollection.com • www.patriapalace.comTo reach Lecce by air, take an Alitalia connection Malta/Rome/Brindisi, and ask the hotel to arrange an airport transfer. Brindisi airport is a 20-minute drive away.