Former Convent of Santa Chiara

Its foundation belongs to the medieval religious fabric of Brindisi, a city the Normans and then Frederick II turned into a crossroads of faiths and cultures. Between the 12th and 13th centuries, along the roads leading to the harbour, the very one from which crusaders set sail, churches and monasteries rose as spiritual way stations. The layout follows the logic of the mendicant orders of the south: an essential church, a cloister, cells and service rooms arranged with reason.

Medieval Brindisi was dotted with religious foundations for women, often linked to noble families who placed daughters and widows there. They were anything but places of exclusion: centres of culture, of artistic production, of herbal and culinary knowledge. The pale, porous local limestone absorbs the morning light and returns it warm in the afternoon, turning every façade into a sundial.