Instead of Lecce
Instead of Lecce: hill towns and coastal towns within 90 minutes
Lecce is the baroque capital of the Salento and a real city, which means it is busy for reasons that have nothing to do with you.
The Salento around it is flat, hot and full of small towns carved from the same soft stone, between two seas an hour apart.
Hill towns and coastal towns in our catalogue within 90 minutes of Lecce by road, ranked by outside recognition. Lecce itself and the other famous places are left out. 12 towns match, and all of them are below.
Instead of Lecce
Lecce · 94,783 residents · Puglia
- CisterninoBrindisi
Hill town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Lecce
- 1h 18m by car
- By train
- Reachable
- Residents
- 11,139
- When to go
- Apr–Oct
- LocorotondoBari
Hill town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Lecce
- 1h 23m by car
- By train
- Reachable
- Residents
- 13,930
- When to go
- Apr–Oct
- MaruggioTaranto
Coastal town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Lecce
- 1h 8m by car
- Residents
- 5,250
- When to go
- May–Jun, Sep–Oct
- OtrantoLecce
Coastal town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Lecce
- 50m by car
- By train
- Reachable
- Residents
- 5,631
- When to go
- May–Sep
- UgentoLecce
Coastal town · Bandiera Blu
- From Lecce
- 59m by car
- By train
- Reachable
- Residents
- 11,988
- When to go
- May–Sep
The 5 best-recognised of the 12 towns that match. Drive times measured by road from Lecce. More of them follow below.
Cisternino
Province: Brindisi · 394 m
An Itria valley borgo on the southern Murgia at 394 meters, whitewashed and looking down over drystone walls and trulli.
Locorotondo
Province: Bari · 410 m
The round white town on the Itria valley ridge at 410 meters, with cummerse roofs the rest of Puglia does not have.
Maruggio
Province: Taranto · 35 m
A fortified Borghi più Belli borgo on a low Ionian hill in Taranto province, built around a Knights of Malta commanderie that ran the Order's southern Italian affairs for six centuries.
Otranto
Province: Lecce · 20 m
Italy's easternmost city, eighty kilometers from Albania, with a Norman mosaic floor and the bones of 813 martyrs in the cathedral.
Ugento
Province: Lecce · 108 m
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fasano
Province: Brindisi · 118 m
A Brindisi-province town running from the Adriatic up to the Itria escarpment, holding a Roman coastal city, a wooded highpoint, and Europe's second-largest safari park.
Gallipoli
Province: Lecce · 12 m
The Ionian beach city on a limestone island, Greek Kallipolis meaning beautiful city, tied to the mainland by a seventeenth-century bridge.
Carovigno
Province: Brindisi · 161 m
An upper Salento hill town between Brindisi and Ostuni, with a marine reserve on its coast.
Melendugno
Province: Lecce · 36 m
Salento's archaeological-beach comune: 17 km of Adriatic coast in Lecce province combining karst pools, Bronze-Age-to-Messapian ruins, and a run of blue-flagged sand.
Monopoli
Province: Bari · 9 m
An Adriatic walled town forty kilometers south of Bari, the Charles V castle on the headland, 156 square kilometers of coastline behind it.
Vernole
Province: Lecce · 38 m
A Salento commune ten kilometers from Lecce whose frazione of Acaya is the only Renaissance fortified town in southern Italy.
Campi Salentina
Province: Lecce · 47 m
A Salento plain town fifteen kilometers north of Lecce, rebuilt after the Saracen raids of 926 and later raised to a marquisate.
Drive times measured by road from Lecce. A town with no time shown is one the router could not reach, usually because it is served by ferry. How this data is built.