Museo Faggiano

A sewer repair in 2001 led Luciano Faggiano to uncover two thousand years of history beneath his home in Lecce. The house became a museum, where Messapian remains, Roman and medieval storage structures, tombs and a deep well reveal the layers beneath the city.

Why it matters

Faggiano began digging to address damp caused by old sewer pipes. The work continued under archaeological supervision through 2007, revealing a site that records successive phases of Lecce's history in one building. Rather than separating the finds into a conventional gallery, the museum preserves the house as an archaeological cross-section.

What to notice

The lower levels include a floor attributed to the Messapian era, around the fifth century BC, with circular holes that may have held hut posts. Higher layers contain rock-cut cisterns, including a bell-shaped example dated to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and circular grain silos. The excavations also revealed tombs, including a child's burial and a communal tomb, alongside a chamber used in the preparation of bodies. A well about ten metres deep reaches the underground water of the Idume. Incised symbols in the rock include a rose-window form associated by the city portal with the Knights Templar.

Context and history

Before the excavations, the building had served several purposes, including as a convent of nuns that closed around the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Archaeological work was completed in December 2007 under the supervision of the Soprintendenza, with architects Franco and Maria Antonietta De Paolis. The family then kept the site open as a private historic-archaeological museum. The finds range from early settlement traces to later storage and burial spaces, creating a compact record of the changing city.