Forget Florence, this Italian town is almost just as beautiful

Of course, I only say this to draw you into this story, because you must, can, and do not want to forget Florence. But the nice thing about Italy is that there are at least a hundred other towns that will lift you up with their beauty. Lecce, for example, is also called the Florence of the south, and that's not for nothing.

The town, which is not entirely coincidentally located in my beloved Puglia, is more than two thousand years old. Lecce is a marriage between Roman roots and 17th-century baroque. There is a Roman amphitheater, and you stumble upon the baroque churches.

Lecce is not large and has a rough 90,000 inhabitants. You eat there as deliciously as in the rest of Puglia, but especially order a caffè leccese with a Pasticciotto, which is a sturdy cookie that even I would kneel for. My daughters fantasize at night about the pasta orecchiette (ear pasta), a somewhat firmer pasta in the shape of small ears that you mainly eat with a salsa pomodoro.

A fun fact is that Lecce is the supplier of famous footballers like Marco Materazzi and Antonio Conte.

Something that Lecce has over Florence, as far as I'm concerned, is that the sea is always nearby. The Adriatic and Ionian Seas are respectively 11 and 23 kilometers away from the city.

Something that makes Lecce a bit less vibrant, I must be honest, is that the concentration of designer stores here is lower than in Florence and that not much happens between lunch and around five in the afternoon. So you might as well just relax from the pasta orecchiette or go to the beach. When in Lecce...