Experiences

Alberobello is the home of the trulli, the conical dry-stone dwellings that have no architectural equivalent anywhere in the world. The Rione Monti district contains over a thousand of them, their whitewashed walls and grey stone roofs climbing the hillside in a cityscape that looks as though it was imagined rather than built. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996, it is best seen early in the morning, before the day-trippers arrive and the streets return to their quiet strangeness.

Locorotondo sits on a hill above the Valle d’Itria with views across a landscape stitched with trulli, olive groves and dry-stone walls. The town’s centro storico is a near-perfect circle of white-rendered houses with steeply pitched roofs — unusual for Puglia — and the main square opens onto a panorama that changes colour with every hour of the day. It is one of the most serene places in the south.

Martina Franca is a baroque set piece: grand churches, aristocratic palaces and a handsome piazza that has hosted one of Italy’s finest summer opera festivals since 1975. The quality of the stonework and the scale of the architecture make it feel like a much larger city than it is.

Lecce is in a category of its own. Sometimes called the Florence of the South, it is a baroque city built from a local limestone so soft and pale it could almost be cream. The churches and palaces are encrusted with an extravagance of carved ornament — flowers, cherubs, saints, monsters — that the local craftsmen produced over three centuries with evident pleasure. The Basilica di Santa Croce alone could occupy an entire afternoon. By night, the illuminated stone glows gold and the city feels like a theatre set.

Polignano a Mare is built on the edge of a limestone cliff above the Adriatic, its old town cantilevered over the sea. The houses are white, the drop is vertiginous, and the light on the water below is extraordinary. The beaches here are enclosed in coves carved into the rock, accessed by steep steps or, in some cases, only by boat.

Matera is one of the most extraordinary cities in southern Italy, a place carved rather than built. Its ancient Sassi districts are a maze of cave dwellings, rock churches, stairways and terraces overlooking the deep ravine of the Gravina. Continuously inhabited for thousands of years and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993, Matera has a silence and drama unlike anywhere else in the region. It is best seen at dusk, when the stone turns gold and the city seems to rise out of the rock itself.