Palazzo Belli,
Stories of memory and love, in Lecce, in the heart of Salento
In the historic centre of Lecce, amidst the pale stone of the Baroque city and the silent traces of ancient noble families, Palazzo Belli holds a history woven from culture, destiny, passion and memory.
It is not merely a historic residence. It is a place where the private story of a patrician family from Lecce intertwines with the cultural life of 18th-century Salento, with literary academies, aristocratic salons and a love story marked by beauty and fragility.
Pietro Belli and Isabella Castriota Scanderbeg lived here, two figures deeply connected to the history of Lecce, to the poetry and culture of their time.
The origins of the Belli family
Pietro Belli was born in Lecce on 1 April 1687, the son of Cesare Belli and Raimondina Lubelli. He belonged to a patrician family which, since the sixteenth century, had produced influential men and prominent figures for the city.
Among the family’s ancestors was Nicola Belli, who in 1651 donated a clock to the city with a profoundly civic significance: to remind each successive mayor of the importance of ‘making good use of time for the benefit of fellow citizens’.
Another member of the family, Giuseppe Belli, a Jesuit, contributed to the religious and cultural life of the area by bequeathing certain properties to the order, including the farmstead known as della Lizza and several gardens in the Fulgenzio district, intended for the establishment of the itinerant missions in Lecce.
Cesare Belli and his connection with Lecce
Pietro’s father, Cesare Belli, was mayor of Lecce from 1 September 1702 to 31 August 1703. During his tenure, he oversaw the construction of the new Porta Rudiae, also known as Porta Rusce, in accordance with the last will and testament of his father-in-law, Prospero Lubelli.
The Belli family coat of arms depicted an ox’s head holding an olive branch in its mouth, surmounted by a silver star: a symbolic image linked to the family’s nobility and its presence in the city’s history.
The family palace, Pietro’s birthplace and residence, stood opposite the church and convent of the Theatines. Over the centuries, it would pass to the Guarini, the Margilio, the Motolese/Margilio, the Provenzano Clara and finally to the current owners.
Pietro Belli: education, culture and restlessness
Cesare Belli wanted a different future for his eldest son from that of the provincial nobility. For this reason, when Pietro was still a teenager, he sent him to the Collegio Clementino in Rome, one of the most prestigious institutions of the time, attended by the cream of Italian and European nobility.
In Rome, Pietro studied classical languages, philosophy and law. He came into contact with cultured and refined circles, but also led a social and extravagant life. Debts soon began to weigh heavily on his existence, to the extent that his mother had to intervene financially to spare him more serious consequences.
His visits to Lecce were rare and often linked to new financial obligations. To cope with these difficulties, Pietro went so far as to sell part of the family estate, thereby compromising the inheritance in advance.
His years in Naples and his encounter with Giambattista Vico
Pictured is Pietro Belli (1687–1750), a poet, philosopher and man of letters from Lecce
To further his studies in law and economics, Pietro subsequently moved to Naples, staying with his relative Cesare Bosco, a counsellor at the criminal court.
In the capital of the Kingdom, he demonstrated remarkable intelligence and erudition. There he forged relationships with leading intellectuals of the time, including Giambattista Vico, who held him in the highest regard and supported him during his most difficult times.
Vico regarded him as one of his dearest disciples. He encouraged him in his philosophical and literary studies and contributed to the publication of the first verse version of Girolamo Fracastoro’s *Syphilis*.
Isabella Castriota Scanderbeg: a shining light of 18th-century Salento
Isabella Castriota Scanderbeg was born in Lecce on 1 September 1704. She was the daughter of Alessandro Castriota and Irene Pieve Sauli, a woman from Gallipoli who came from a wealthy family.
Her mother died a few days after giving birth to twins, leaving Isabella as the heir to her personal estate. Her childhood was soon marked by loneliness, family interests and decisions made by others.
Following her father’s second marriage, Isabella was sent in January 1715 to be educated at the convent of Santa Chiara in Gallipoli, at the behest of her maternal uncle Giambattista Pieve Sauli. She remained there for six years.
An arranged marriage and a sacrificed youth
At just sixteen years of age, Isabella was married off without her consent to the sixty-year-old Filippo Guarini, Baron of Tuglie. The wedding took place on 11 December 1720 in Gallipoli, at the home of her uncle, who was then mayor of the town.
For Isabella, it marked the beginning of an unhappy marriage, spent alongside a much older and often ailing man. From the age of sixteen to twenty-three, as evidenced by her father Alessandro’s notes, she wrote repeatedly to her father, her uncle and the nuns of Santa Chiara, asking to be released from that situation.
Her pleas went unheeded.
The retreat at the Sant’Anna Conservatoire
In 1727, after seven years of hardship, Isabella secured a separation from her husband on the condition that she would retire to the Conservatory of Sant’Anna in Lecce.
The Conservatory of Sant’Anna was not a convent, but a stately home founded in 1686 with a humanitarian purpose: to take in noblewomen, unfortunate young girls or victims of domestic tyranny, without imposing monastic vows upon them.
In that peaceful setting, Isabella was able to devote herself to classical studies, poetry and culture. In an era closed to women’s emancipation, her voice slowly began to make itself heard.
Entry into Lecce’s high society
On 31 August 1732, with the permission of her now elderly and ailing husband, Isabella made her debut in the cultured society of Lecce.
She enrolled at the Accademia degli Spioni and became a prominent figure in the city’s literary circles. She aroused curiosity, gossip and admiration, but also respect for her intelligence and poetic sensibility.
It was in that circle that she met Pietro Belli, a philosopher and poet whom she had known as a child in her father’s house: Pietro’s father, in fact, had been Isabella’s godfather at her baptism.
Pictured is the poet and noblewoman
Isabella Castriota Scanderbeg (1704–1749)
Pietro and Isabella: a love born of poetry
A deep bond, initially platonic, developed between Pietro Belli and Isabella Castriota. For some eight years, they were united by a strong passion for literature, poetry and cultured conversation.
Their relationship grew over time, fuelled by intellectual affinity, shared sensibilities and a rare emotional closeness.
The death of Baron Filippo Guarini on 8 December 1740, and that of Pietro’s mother, Raimondina Lubelli, in the same year, finally freed the couple from family and social obstacles.
On 22 June 1741, Pietro and Isabella were married.
The wedding and the difficult years at Palazzo Belli
Married life, however, did not bring the peace of mind they had hoped for. Pietro continued to be excessively generous, a lover of luxury, travel and high society.
To provide his wife with a high standard of living, he spent lavishly on jewellery, horses, servants and stays in Naples, where the couple attended performances at the new Teatro San Carlo.
Isabella gave birth to two daughters: Raimondina, born on 16 December 1742, and Irene Caterina, born on 17 September 1745.
But Pietro’s debts grew worse. On one occasion, a warrant for his arrest on debt grounds was even issued, though it was postponed for a few days to allow Isabella to pawn jewellery and personal belongings to satisfy the creditors.
Isabella’s fragility and the end of a dream
A further blow for Isabella came when she was excluded from the inheritance of her maternal uncle, Giambattista Pieve Sauli, who had died in early 1748. The decision to favour another nephew hurt her deeply and contributed to the deterioration of her already fragile health.
Marked by anguish, disappointment and hardship, Isabella died on 4 March 1749, aged 44, at Palazzo Belli in Lecce.
In her will, she named her two daughters as heirs, but, fearing her husband’s profligacy, she entrusted the guardianship of their assets to her brother Francesco Castriota and her brother-in-law Carlo Belli, who were considered more rigorous administrators.
She was buried in the church of the Fathers of St Peter of Alcantara, now known as San Giacomo al Parco, in the family tomb where Pietro was also to be laid to rest.
The final years of Pietro Belli
After Isabella’s death, Pietro’s life became increasingly painful. The loss of his wife was followed by that of his daughter Irene Caterina and his brother Carlo, whilst his other brother, Nicola, left for Naples with his wife Maria Guerrini.
Pietro gradually withdrew into himself, broken by financial difficulties, the loss of family members and the accumulated grief.
He died on 20 August 1751, two and a half years after Isabella, and was buried beside her.
Raimondina Belli and the end of the family line
On her father’s death, Raimondina Belli was his only surviving daughter and heir. She was just nine years old.
In accordance with her father’s will, she was entrusted to Giovanna Fiore, wife of Angelo Antonio Paladini, who was charged with looking after her until she entered the monastery of San Giovanni, once permission had been granted by Rome.
Her fate, however, took a different turn: Raimondina married Francesco Antonio Guarini, Duke of Poggiardo, and honoured her father’s recommendation by settling the debts left by Pietro.
With her death, the Belli family line died out for lack of direct heirs.
Palazzo Belli today: a place of remembrance in Lecce
Many of Pietro Belli’s letters, poems, Latin epigrams and philosophical reflections have been lost or destroyed over time.
Yet the memory of Pietro and Isabella has not faded. It lives on in the physical and topographical traces of the city of Lecce: a street bearing their name, the elegant Palazzo Belli, and the memory of a human story that spans culture, love, sorrow and nobility of spirit.
Palazzo Belli is not merely a historic building in the heart of Lecce’s old town. It is the silent stage for a story that still resonates today: the story of a restless poet, a cultured yet ill-fated woman, and a love that blossomed through letters, endured through hardship, and has been preserved in the memory of the Salento region.
A glimpse of our building
Isabella Castriota Scanderbeg: woman, poet and symbol
Isabella Castriota Scanderbeg remains one of the most significant figures of 18th-century Salento.
Her life was marked by family pressures, an unhappy marriage and profound injustices. Yet it was also characterised by scholarship, poetry, a quest for inner freedom and an extraordinary cultural vitality.
In an era when women were granted little space in public and intellectual life, Isabella found a form of redemption in poetry and the literary circles of Lecce.
Her story, which has come down to us through notes, family memoirs and local historiography, continues to give a voice to a woman who transformed pain into culture and fragility into memory.
The history of Palazzo Belli, between Lecce and the Salento
To tell the story of Palazzo Belli is to recount a part of the history of Lecce and the Salento region.
It means stepping into a residence that retains the charm of the great noble families, but also the shadows of their private affairs. It means journeying through 18th-century Lecce, its literary academies, the aristocratic world, family tensions, and the role of culture as a form of resistance.
Within the rooms of Palazzo Belli, history does not appear as a distant sequence of dates and names. It becomes a living narrative, made up of people, choices, passions and destinies.
And it is precisely this intertwining of architecture, memory and emotion that makes Palazzo Belli one of the most evocative places in the history of Lecce.