Stadio Via del Mare

The ground stands out on the road towards San Cataldo. When U.S. Lecce went up to Serie A, the stadium was pulled apart and rebuilt in a hundred days — enough of a job to take it from 20,500 to 55,000 and, for a while, make it the sixth-largest in Italy. Numbered seating cut it to 40,670, and the figure has fallen further since.

The rebuild was signed off by Ettore Giardiniero, mayor at the time, and in January 2002 the ground took his name. In practice the older name has never gone away, and both are still used.

Not everything here has been football. Pope John Paul II spoke at the ground in 1994; Lou Reed, the Kaiser Chiefs and Vasco Rossi have all played it. On 1 November 2007 the equipment manager, Antonio De Giorgi, was killed by lightning during a training session on the pitch.

Work is under way again, this time for the 2026 Mediterranean Games. A modular steel roof costing €25 million will cover every stand — the first time the ground has been sheltered right round — with a further €11.3 million going on internal safety work, following the €5 million the club had already spent on restyling. The playing surface remains natural grass.