Italy famously looks like a boot and during our stay in the south we drove to the bottom of the heel that goes by the name of the Salento peninsula, to the town of Santa Maria di Leuca. It’s a peninsula of solar farms, polytunnels, olive groves and vineyards, orchards and fields of vegetables, derelict farm…
Tag: Puglia
A week in Gallipoli on the coast of Puglia
The Puglian seaside town of Gallipoli looked historic, elegant and characterful in the photos I found on Google ahead of our stay. But as a seasoned traveller, I should’ve known that marketing was at play. Lonely Planet had warned me that it was a working town, where fishing is still a mainstay of the local…
The extravagant baroque of Lecce, Puglia
Puglia is poor. Driving from north to south, we witnessed grim estates on the outskirts of Brindisi, derelict buildings by the score and lots of litter. But the sun was shining and bushes bursting with colourful flowers lined the pot-holed motorway. The city of Lecce’s suburbs were as ropey as Brindisi’s but it was the…
The hill-top town of Locorotondo in Puglia
We have TV presenter Alex Polizzi to thank for our trip to Puglia. Her Channel 5 travel documentary a few years ago highlighted a string of treasures in southern Italy that we just had to visit. Our stops at Matera, Lecce and Alberobello were all a result of watching the programme. And so was Locorotondo,…
Life among the trulli of Alberobello, Puglia
Puglia is famous for its strange, conical-roofed trulli. They pepper the landscape, peek out from olive groves and stand lonely in the fields. But Alberobello is the place to see them in all their glory. In the heart of the town, nestled on both sides of a shallow valley, they pack the streets and alleys….
Into the earth’s crust at Grotte di Castellana, Puglia
Deep below the fields, farms and villages of Puglia lies Grotte di Castellana, a cave system that’s something like 90 million years old. It made for a great stop on the road to Alberobello during our tour of southern Italy. Italy’s largest subterranean network of caves was created by an underground river but, remarkably, it…