Historical Note

1874. In Via della Dogana Vecchia, near the important quadrivial crossroads of the four spice sellers, Lecce aristocrat Don Francesco Guarini owned a series of small houses which he decided to unite for the purposes of creating his own principal place of abode. Adjacent to that which is known today as Vico Storto Carità Vecchia, the old chapel of S. Maria della Carità (1522), used for burying condemned prisoners that were assisted by the Gonfalone Confraternity, was erected. On the spot where the Risorgimento would make its appearance a few centuries later, there could not fail to be, also, a tavern where meals were prepared for the prisoners looked after by the Confraternity. According to Giulio Cesare Infantino, this inn was called the “hosteria”. The church was demolished in 1837, and then rebuilt in more modest dimensions by Luigi Martirano in 1853. Today, the old chapel has been completely incorporated, together with the family dwelling it was attached to, within the hotel. During the last restoration works performed on the hotel, a fragment of a late sixteenth-century column was discovered which belonged to the first Chiesa della Carità.

1880. The grand residence of Don Guarini was ceded to the Baldassarre family who founded the Albergo Risorgimento, named in honour of the historical period of national unification. Its central position, the sheer presence of the building and the fact that it was a new structure made the Risorgimento the most prestigious hotel in the city; at the time it consisted only of the ground floor and first floor. At the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the 1900s, Oronzo Baldassarre extended and modernized the hotel. The idea, then as now, was to make the Risorgimento a landmark for the art of hospitality and, as is extolled in a publicity flyer of 1901, that the new and improved hotel would stand out for reasonable prices, courteous staff, its omnibus service to and from the railway station, and for its restaurant. Oronzo, by now in advancing years, entrusted his lawyer son Denizar with the task of managing the complex; it was he who, in 1922, petitioned the municipality of Lecce and obtained permission to erect the edifice and on Easter Saturday four years later, the Risorgimento reopened its doors to show the city all its magnificence with a façade recalling the formal completeness of bygone times. Its innovation showed in its technical and functional appearance: telephones in the rooms, apartments with private bathrooms; and more, the presence of radiators, hot and cold running water, its own restaurant, even an American Bar and its own private garage.

2007. Nowadays, under the name Risorgimento Resort, the hotel is reborn under a different star, and blazes with decades of hospitality.