Not everything in Lecce, one of Italy’s capitals of Baroque, is what it seems… You enter into one of its beautiful churches, your eyes adjust to the light, and there they are: saints, Madonnas, crucifixes, all grandiose and somehow dramatic, standing in side chapels or above altars. Nothing about them suggests fragility.
Only later, sometimes after someone points it out, you learn many of those statues are made of paper. Yes, paper or, to be more precise, papier-mâché, known in Italy as cartapesta.
