Lecce: one ticket for six churches, and a dug house

The churches of Lecce are sold as one ticket: LeccEcclesiae costs €11, covers six sites and stays valid for 15 days, with one entry each, so you can spread them across the trip.

The ticket, and who does not need it

LeccEcclesiae costs €11 full, €5 reduced for ages 12 to 17, and €24 for the family formula of two adults with children aged 12 to 17. It runs 15 days from first use, one entry per site, and the entries can fall on different days. Prices in euros.

Three groups pay nothing: people entering to pray, residents of the diocese of Lecce, and children under 12. Buy it at the central desk in Piazza del Duomo 5, inside Palazzo del Seminario, at the Basilica di Santa Croce desk, or online at chieselecce.it. See the LeccEcclesiae circuit.

Six sites, and when they are open

The 6 sites are the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta on Piazza Duomo, the Basilica di Santa Croce, the churches of Santa Chiara and San Matteo, the Palazzo dell'Antico Seminario with its cloister and the chapel of San Gregorio Taumaturgo, and the MuDAS diocesan museum of sacred art.

Summer hours are 9:00 am to 9:00 pm and winter hours 9:00 am to 6:00 pm, with last entry 15 minutes before closing (2026). The long summer evening is the useful part: Santa Croce after 7:00 pm has low sun on the facade and far fewer people in front of it.

A third of an amphitheater, under the square

Only about a third of the Roman amphitheater is above ground, part of the arena and part of the seating, because Cosimo De Giorgi's excavation of 1900 stopped where the square begins. The rest sits under Piazza Sant'Oronzo and the buildings around it.

It was built in the Augustan age, with later work under Hadrian, and it has held national monument status since 1906. You look down into it from the pavement, which is why so many people walk past without registering what it is. More at the Roman amphitheater.

The house where a sewer pipe became a museum

The Museo Faggiano charges €5 full, €3 for ages 8 to 16 and nothing under 8, and opens every day from 9:30 am to 8:00 pm at Via Ascanio Grandi 56. It is run by the Idume cultural association.

It exists because in 2001 the owner, Luciano Faggiano, started work on the drains of his own building and hit archaeology, then kept going down through the layers. It is small, vertical and full of ladders, so it works badly for anyone with limited mobility and very well for children. Read a Roman theater under a house and things to do in Lecce.

Getting here from Rome eats a day

The direct Frecciarossa from Roma Termini takes between 5h47 and 6h20 in 2026: FR 8315⁵ at 2:58 pm arrives 8:45 pm at a €58.90⁵ base fare, FR 9511⁵ at 10:00 am arrives 3:51 pm at €54.90⁵, FR 8303⁵ at 8:00 am arrives 2:20 pm at €46.90⁵.

Anything involving a change, Intercity plus regional, runs from 8h29 to 11h15, so the direct trains are worth planning around rather than booking late. Lecce is the southeastern terminus of the Frecciarossa network, which is why the fare drops as the departure gets earlier. See getting to Lecce and Puglia.

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