You can walk, leisurely, from Santa Marina to Piazza del Popolo, past the Villa Comunale (public garden). At every step, palaces of noble families stand side by side with courtyards of ordinary people: the noble prestige with everyday life.
Alongside this axis, starting from the sixteenth century, the city began to expand beyond the walled settlement. Even today the façades in local stone, the doorways and the coats of arms tell the story of those who led this development: Palazzo Papadia, the emblem of a new aristocracy; Palazzo Negri, now home to the community library; Palazzo De Bellis, with its elegant rusticated doorway and its keystone decorated with volutes and acanthus leaves.
Yet Via Salentina is not only a street of palaces. If you just slow down, you will unexpectedly catch a glimpse of a courtyard beyond a rusticated portal: a well, a few plants, the gathered silence of a slower life. They are the places of the discreet Muro (Corte Fiore, Corte Spano, Vico Portapannocchia), where people used to know each other by their names, in the shadows of the walls. Along it, you will meet the column called “Crocepinta”, a small token of stone and devotion, watching over the pace of wayfarers and pilgrims for centuries.
Finally, the road opens up to embrace Piazza del Popolo, lit by the light on the local stone. Here, via Salentina tells reveal its meaning: not a simple path, but the thread along which Muro Leccese has changed shape without losing its identity – from the Byzantine quiet of Santa Marina to the sheltered life of the courtyards, up to the majestic heart of the town.