Puglia is one of the best regions in Italy for a road trip because the car is genuinely useful once you leave the main railway corridor. It gives you access to masserie, trulli countryside, small beaches, hill towns and coastal roads that are awkward to combine by public transport. The mistake is assuming that having … Read more
Seven days is the sweet spot for a first trip to Puglia. A week gives you enough time to see the region’s major contrasts—Bari’s old town, the limestone Adriatic coast, trulli and white villages, Lecce’s baroque centre and two different sides of Salento—without turning every day into a transfer day. The best one-week itinerary does … Read more
The Valle d’Itria is the part of Puglia that most closely matches the image many travellers have before arriving: trulli scattered between olive groves, pale-stone farmhouses, dry-stone walls and white hill towns rising above a patchwork of fields. Yet it is not one single attraction and it should not be treated as a quick stop … Read more
Puglia is one of those regions where food is not a separate part of the trip. It is woven into almost everything you do. A morning walk through Bari Vecchia can lead past women shaping orecchiette outside their homes; a drive through the Valle d’Itria may end at a butcher shop that turns into a … Read more
Puglia rewards travellers who resist the temptation to treat it as a checklist of white villages and famous beaches. The region is long, geographically varied and surprisingly diverse: Romanesque cathedrals face the Adriatic in the north, trulli and olive-covered countryside fill the Valle d’Itria, Baroque streets dominate Lecce, while the Salento peninsula alternates between rocky … Read more
There are places in Puglia that impress you with famous monuments, and others that win you over simply by making you want to slow down. Locorotondo belongs firmly to the second group. Perched above the Valle d’Itria, surrounded by vineyards, olive groves and scattered trulli, Locorotondo is a compact maze of whitewashed houses, flower-filled balconies, … Read more
There are towns in Puglia that impress you with a famous monument, and others that win you over with their atmosphere. Ostuni belongs firmly to the second group. From a distance, its historic centre looks like a bright white crown rising above a landscape of olive groves, with the blue Adriatic visible on the horizon. … Read more
Whitewashed walls, narrow lanes and hundreds of grey stone cones rising above the rooftops: Alberobello is one of the most distinctive places in Puglia. Even if you have seen photographs of the town before arriving, walking through its historic trulli districts is a completely different experience. Located in the beautiful Valle d’Itria, Alberobello is famous … Read more
Ten days is enough to experience Puglia as a region rather than as a collection of famous postcards. You can begin with Gargano’s forested promontory and dramatic Adriatic coast, move through Bari and the limestone towns of central Puglia, then finish in Lecce and Salento where the landscape and architecture change again. The route is … Read more
Cisternino is one of the best places in the Valle d’Itria for travellers who want a white hill town that feels lived-in rather than staged. It is smaller than Martina Franca, less famous than Alberobello and less polished than nearby Locorotondo, but that is exactly why it works so well for a late-afternoon visit or … Read more