Specchia, in Salento Region, is amongst the nicest villages of Italy. Situated in a strategic position dominating the valley below, Specchia's historic center is considered to be among the most beautiful in Salento. The narrow streets, closed to traffic and periodically interrupted by flights of steps, enclose a residential complex which is in large part fruit of a spontaneous 16th- and 17th-century architecture which has reached our era almost intact. To the visitor venturing about the village in silence and solitude will speak, wrote Antonio Penna - "the simple and dignified Catalan or Baroque portals, the cornices in Lecce stone, the Italian or Latin inscriptions, the corbels of the balconies overhanging the streets, the bulging wrought iron railings, the suspended arches, which still adorn the façades of the once noble houses, the friezes, the statues, the columns, the votive shrines with their sacred images worn away by time"