Santa Maria di Ognibene, Baroque convent in Lecce, Italy.
Santa Maria di Ognibene is a baroque church and former Augustinian convent complex in Lecce. The two-storey facade ends in a broken pediment holding a statue of the Madonna and Child, with four statues still in their niches. Inside is a single nave on a Latin cross plan, three communicating chapels per side, four baroque altars on the left and four 19th-century altars on the right, and a dome over the crossing.
The Augustinian order was welcomed to Lecce by a university resolution of 13 March 1639, and the convent was founded on 18 April 1649 on land donated by the university. The friars left in 1810 when the order was suppressed; the Minor Observants then ran a philosophy school there until 1852. The church was later deconsecrated and used as a municipal warehouse and then a military tailor's workshop until the 1960s.
The church was also called dei Coronatelli because the barefoot Augustinian friars venerated the Virgin Crowned. The garden, known as Giardino d'Ogni Bene, keeps a productive role: orchard, Salento vines, a pomegranate avenue and Judas trees, with botanical labels on the trees.
The complex reopened to the public in May 2017 after restoration, including the external spaces and the Giardino di Ogni Bene. The garden is divided into a fruit orchard with ornamental vegetable beds, a vineyard of Salento grape varieties, a Judas tree square, a pomegranate avenue, a flower garden and a perimeter path of Mediterranean scrub; trees carry botanical identification labels.
The garden's stone pergola, covered with wisteria and iris, was rebuilt on the axis of an earlier structure found during archaeological monitoring, likely dating from the convent's military occupation. The garden also keeps a piazza of Judas trees and a path of Mediterranean scrub species, with botanical labels on the trees.
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