CHURCH OF SAN MATTEO, Church Of San Matteo

Hi, my name’s Rick, and I’m your personal guide. Along with MyWoWo, I’d like to welcome you to one of the Wonders of the World: the Church of San Matteo, the most Baroque church in Lecce.

The Church of San Matteo was built between 1667 and 1700 for the Tertiary Franciscan Sisters, probably by Giovanni Andrea Larducci, a Venetian architect. San Matteo is completely different from all the churches you’ve already seen or will see in Lecce.

The convex bottom part of the facade appears to swell outwards, while the upper part recedes from the lower part and appears to cave inwards.

The more traditional churches in Lecce owe their beauty to the numerous decorative elements, but there was no question that the facade could be anything other than flat. This approach to architecture, featuring concave and convex structural elements in addition to surface embellishments, is one of the most interesting aspects of the Baroque style developed in Rome by the sublime architects Bernini and Borromini, who conceived buildings as magnificent living beings, able to break away from the rigid, traditional canons....