Palazzo baronale Lopez y Royo

With its wide facade of aligned windows, Palazzo Lopez y Royo overlooks Piazza Falconieri, in the heart of Monteroni di Lecce.\n\nThe building still bears the features of an imposing fortress, but when the fiefdom passed into the hands of the Lopez y Royo family, it was endowed with nobler and more elegant architectural elements such as the beautiful entrance portal surmounted by a broken arch and flanked by two pairs of columns. On the upper floor, once a rich and important gallery, was the chapel dedicated to the Annunciation.\n\nIt was the Monteroni family, from whom the town at the gates of Lecce takes its name, who laid the foundation of the palace’s first nucleus. Over the centuries, it was home to illustrious citizens including the poet and scientist Imbriani of the 17th century, Filippo Lopez y Royo, Archbishop of Palermo and later Viceroy, Ignazio Falconieri, a liberal executed during the Bourbon repression in 1799 to whom the square is dedicated, and Vincenzo Sabato, professor and architect recognized by the Academy of Paris as “Friend of Sciences”.