Chiesa dei Santi Niccolò e Cataldo, Lecce

The church of Saints Nicholas and Cataldo is a medieval church in Lecce. Together with the adjoining monastery it was founded in 1180 by the count of Norman lineage Tancred of Altavilla, who became king of Sicily. The construction of the Temple represents a true 'model' that innovated and at the same time then directed the architectural and stylistic dictates for the creation of the so-called 'New Romanesque School of Idrutina' by rejuvenating the now stale architecture of the early Romanesque of Terra d'Otranto, where the Latin-Byzantine-Epirotic component merged with the stylistic features from beyond the Alps. Starting with Tancredi, stylistic models spread that survived for about two centuries until the realization of the mid-14th-century church of Santa Caterina in Galatina; even going so far as to dictate the architectural lines for the realization of the Cathedral of Matera. The count donated the complex to the Benedictine monks, who were followed in 1494, at the behest of Alfonso II of Naples, by the Olivetan fathers who remained until 1807. In 1807 Napoleon established the Licei and the complex became the Liceo Palmieri. In 1870 the complex became the site of the Asylum of Mendicity, and from the 1980s' it was home to the Faculty of Cultural Heritage.