The Visit Lecce website (
visit link)
informs us:
"The small Renaissance church of San Sebastiano , now the headquarters of the Palmieri Foundation that promotes many cultural initiatives in the city, faces the rear exit (or one of the two lateral ones, according to the point of view) of the Cathedral of Lecce almost perfectly. It stands on the remains of a pre-existing cave-church, perhaps dating back to the early Christian era, in vico dei Sotterranei.
It was rebuilt around 1520 and dedicated to the saints Leonardo, Rocco and Sebastiano (the latter patron of victims of the plague, the city being tormented by a serious epidemic in those years). It was restored in 1762 before being desecrated in 1967 to be used for private purposes for the following thirty years.
The small façade in local limestone, with a sloping profile, is characterized by a series of hanging arches under which the portal stands out, surmounted by a decorated architrave resting on fluted columns, and by a bas-relief, in the upper part of the tympanum, where the face of Christ, in the cloth that the sacred tradition claims was used by Veronica to dry the face of the Saviour, is depicted. The church has a longitudinal plan with a single nave; once the side walls housed seven altars, but today almost all of them are destroyed. Only the sixteenth-century frescoes depicting the Our Lady of Good Counsel , the Holy Crucifix , Our Lady of Assistance and an image of the Pietà remain of the original decorations.
Towards the end of the 1500s (but there is no definite information on the matter), Capuchin nuns lived and worked in the convent annexed to the church, responsible for the recovery of women of a dubious past, who, once repented, entered the community taking a vow of seclusion: in the little church the wooden shutters, through which the hidden nuns attended the religious services, are still visible. In the city the convent was also known by the name "The Repentants"."
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