Chiara Montinaro

I spent years restoring stonework on Lecce churches before I ever thought about guiding, so I notice things in the facades that most visitors walk straight past. On video I try to hold the frame on one figure or one panel long enough that you actually register it, rather than sweeping across the whole front in a few seconds. I speak French as well as English, since a good number of the people who book me like hearing the history in their own language partway through. I trained originally as a conservator, and that training still shapes how I read a building.