Putti e puccia

"Putti e pucce!" Try repeating it to yourself a few times, it becomes a little mesmerising; or imagine your favourite fictional or actual Italian saying it - Salvo Montalbano, Giorgio Locatelli, Gina Lollobrigida, Gino d'Campo or whoever, the effect is more tantalising. Completely mad considering in English you are repeating the phrase 'cherabim and sandwiches'.

Having just returned from a 'grand day out' in Lecce, the so called 'Florence of the South', it's 'putti e pucce' that are uppermost in our minds. Gill's verdict on Lecce's pucce - 'though good, they definitely lacked the deliciousness of those in Ostuni'. 

Meanwhile, I became engrossed in a Google-fest attempting to understand why the renowned Baroque facades of Lecce are splattered with naked little boys with wings, and what they symbolise. Surprisingly, given that 'putti' are ubiquitous in Renaissance and Baroque art little has been written on the subject. Two chapters from the sole work on the subject, Charles Dempsey's 'Inventing the Renaissance Putto' are available on-line, maybe I'll download them.

Visiting Lecce proved tricky. Motorhomes and urban areas are not made for one another. Whenever we decide to visit a city we tend to find a place to stay in a nearby town with good public transport links into the urban centre. In recent years this had become ever more necessary, as cities across Europe introduce a bewildering variety of Low Emission Zones. Rather than buy a decal for France and another for Germany or get our heads around some local variation to the schemes, we simply avoid them altogether. In most places local public transport is cheap, regular and reliable.

Not in Lecce though, we compared places to stay nearby on the 'Park for Night', 'Campercontacts' and 'Search for Sites' apps with bus and train routes around Lecce on Google. There was almost zero correlation. The only possible place to stay seemed to be an Agriturismo about 5kms south of Lecce which claimed it was next to a dedicated cycleway into the city. Experience of driving in Italy made me very sceptical about the claim, it seemed to me any attempt to establish a cycle lane by an Italian road would immediately be purloined by parked cars, overflowing skips and swarms of Vespas driven haphazardly in every direction at once. Still, we wanted to visit the city, our daughter lived there for a month and loved it, so we phoned Agriturismo Arangea and booked in.

Agriturismo developed in the 1960s and 1970s as a farm diversification programme, more recently they have grown in popularity as 'eco-tourism' and an interest in locally sourced produce becomes more mainstream. Quite a few places offer sosta facilities for motorhomes as well as bed and breakfast or self catering accommodation. Part of their charm is the rural location, off the beaten track, often showcasing regional gastronomy. However, in Italy off the beaten track usually means poorly maintained narrow roads full of alarming hazards for the unsuspecting moho driver. 

Though situated close to Lecce's outskirts Agriturismo Arangea managed to tick all the boxes in terms of access difficulties. The sat-nav sent us down a single track service road running alongside Lecce's tangentiale, then through some tight one-way streets in San Pietro in Lama. The Agriturismo was off a roundabout a couple of kilometres further on. It was surrounded by a two metre high wall and closed solid metal gate. We pressed the intercom and eventually someone let us in.

The sosta occupies an old olive grove at the front of the former farm. There are ten or twelve pitches among the trees, it's quite a tight squeeze. There are facilities, but two toilets and one shower is not really sufficient, moreover the path to them through an orchard is ill-lit and hazardous after dark. The place charges €25 per night, you are paying for the ambience more than anything else. Am I being curmudgeonly to suggest the public car park within easy walking distance of Ostuni was a much better bet?

As for the cycleway into the city centre, we asked a Belgian couple about it, they reckoned it was ok, about four kilometres down a little used, pot-holed minor road, and a further three through the suburbs to Port Rudiae at the edge of the centro storico, most of it on dedicated cycle tracks. We took a quick trip up the 'Via Copertino' to the edge of the built-up area, yes bumpy and narrow but not many cars, which was a good thing as the few that passed us didn't give an inch to cyclists.

 Tomorrow was Sunday, we figured we could cope with the city traffic, in truth there were no other options if we wanted to visit the city.

Port Rudiae is one of the gates into the old city, these days it has a market next to it with plenty of bollards and sign posts handy to our chain bikes to. 

Coincidentally it was just across the street from the apartment our daughter rented when she lived here for a few weeks in October 2019, so we had a ready source of advice as to where to find the best places to eat.

Before lunch we wandered around the central area famed for its handsome streets and baroque architecture. The big piazza next to the duomo looked quite Spanish, the cathedral's tower reminiscent of Cordoba or Salamanca. This is not entirely fanciful as Puglia was ruled for centuries by the Aragonese as part of the Kingdom of Naples, which also included Sicily and Sardinia.

Though Lecce's most famous buildings date from the sixteenth and seventeenth century the city also has substantial Roman remains as well as more modern buildings. I prefer this mixture to places that are living museums. A particularly bland piece thirties inspired modernism towered over the ruins of the Teatro Romano.

The roots of the style lie in Mussolini's classically inspired take on Art Deco and was influential internationally. Public buildings in England from the 1930s to the early fifties look similar. Am I first person to gaze at Lecce's cityscape and end up thinking about Hornsey town hall?

In fact the whole square was a pleasing hotchpotch, like the row of slightly run-down shops with a big church in their midst. 

Equally intriguing was the clock on the side of the Banco di Napoli, it looked like a gigantic piece of art nouveau jewellery and seemed older than the building it was attached to.

Time for lunch! Reviews for l'angilino's pucci were glowing, we knew the place was down a side street near the church of Santa Croce which was well signed. Still, it took a bit of wandering about before we found it.

The menu is limited and hasn't changed much since the one snapped by a happy customer two years ago and posted on Google. However the reviews remain consistently positive. What this means is the place does a few things very well, it has found a winning formula and stuck with it.

Gill chose the meatball based sandwich....

I went for the 'Max Mariola' partly because I like anchovies and the veggie option wasn't really an option as it contained chilli-peppers which I am avoiding at the moment...

They were both good, but our first pucce in Ostuni' were still 'tops', we decided.

Next gelato, the gelateria of choice was nearby, just beyond Santa Croce. We passed its imposing facade. It's difficult not to be impressed by a big Baroque church, especially a full-on counter reformation monstrosity. They were designed to exude authority and power. 

However the baroque is full of contradictions. In terms of scale and overall design the buildings are designed to overwhelm, but the detail of their decoration is often playful and takes delight in upending the principles of Classical architecture.

Both the duomo and Santa Croce had scores of 'putti' scattered about among the figures of saints, popes and apostles. 

Cherubim on religious works become Cupids on secular, the former symbolising the omnipresence of divine love, the latter the ubiquity of profane. They function like emojis, a commonly understood image interpreted differently depending upon the context. 

While I was photographing the facade Gill was staring at the masonry - limestone, but what type? In the end gelato called, we headed to the place just around the corner. It was fabulous.

People who own gelateria are real enthusiasts, and if you show interest are often happy to let you taste all sorts of flavours before you make a final choice. We had an interesting five minutes chatting with the owner about this and that. 

Somehow we managed to travel for decades in Italy without tasting a single gelato. Given many of these trips were family holidays I have to conclude that we failed seriously as parents by not introducing our kids to gelato at an early age. At Christmas when we all meet up I must apologise to them for their deprived childhoods.

Time now to head back to Porto Rudiae. We wondered if cutting through the park may be a shortcut. It wasn't, more of a detour.

However we did happen upon Lecce's theatre, an unapologetic expression classical purity among all the baroque excess..

As I framed the shot Peter Greenaway's 'The Belly of an Architect' came to mind, I don't understand why his work has slipped from public consciousness. Lecce's soundtrack quite easily could be something minimalist by Michael Nyam. 

It's a very filmic city. Next, a familiar  irrational anxiety -  we are always relieved to see our bikes again, just as we had left them a few hours previously. In less than half an hour we were back at Agriturismo Arangea. 

Tomorrow we are heading to Otranto, a small seaside resort about 40kms south of here. Lecce is a beautiful city, but the older I get the happier I am to escape urban environments. I love the countryside but I was born in a small town and have lived in a medium sized one for most of my adult life. Big enough to be interesting, small enough to walk to the edge, maybe that is my preferred habitat. That being said I am also happy enough living in a 7m box with wheels where you get a different view out the window every few days. Seven months bricks and mortar, five months in a van, sometimes visiting a city, more often exploring different landscapes and coasts. For me I think being by the sea is the best thing of all.

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