Alle Due Corti

Alle Due Corti is the Mariella-family-run trattoria on Corte dei Giugni — a small medieval courtyard in the Borgo Antico, two streets from Piazza del Duomo — and is Lecce's longest-running family-owned dining room (continuously operated since the 1990s). The space is a converted 16th-century stone-walled palazzo with hand-carved larch beams, a wood-burning fireplace at the back, copper-bottom pans hung from the rafters, and forty-eight covers across two rooms.

The menu is the canonical Salentine list. Hand-rolled orecchiette with cime di rapa (turnip-tops) and Pecorino; ciceri e tria — the Salentine chickpea-and-pasta soup; tagliolini with Otranto-sea sea-urchin; pezzetti di cavallo (Pugliese horse-meat braise) with tomato and bay leaf; the famous 'pasticciotto leccese' — a custard-and-pastry institution that the kitchen has run continuously since opening; a four-course Salentine tasting menu at €38 that is the village's most reasonable serious dinner.

The wine list runs heavily to Salentine — Negroamaro from the Salice Salentino DOC, Primitivo di Manduria, Aleatico (the regional sweet red), Salice Salentino rosato — with a tightly chosen Italian-national section. Glass pours start at €4 and the by-the-glass programme is the most generous in the village. The cellar's small Champagne section is genuinely interesting.

Service is family-run — the Mariella siblings rotate the floor, the captains have worked the property for years, and the kitchen pacing accommodates the Salentine dinner format. Alle Due Corti is the dining room that visiting Italians, Salentine farming families, and serious-budget travellers all use as a default lunch and dinner address — the room has hosted a generation of Salentine cultural and food-industry dinners across thirty years.

Alle Due Corti is the team-dinner room in Lecce — the Salentine menu is shared-format, the wine list is forgiving on a multi-bottle dinner for eight, and the courtyard summer terrace is the canonical Lecce mid-tier setting. It is also the easy first-date answer when both diners want Salentine atmosphere without the seven-course pacing of Primo. Book the corner four-top by the wood-burning fireplace.