The 11 best towns in Puglia

Salento’s baroque capital, carved out of soft golden stone into façades so ornate it’s called the Florence of the South. The Basilica di Santa Croce is the showpiece, but the pleasure is aimless: piazzas, a Roman amphitheatre sunk below the main square, wine bars in the lanes between three monumental gates. The most walkable base in the deep south, and central for both Salento coasts.

What you actually do here is walk. The Basilica di Santa Croce is the set piece, a façade so densely carved with beasts, cherubs and foliage that it took a century to finish, and the Roman amphitheatre sits sunk below Piazza Sant’Oronzo, still half buried under the modern city. Piazza del Duomo is the one to see after dark, when the cathedral, bell tower and bishop’s palace are floodlit inside their enclosed square. A few old-town workshops still make the papier-mâché saints Lecce has produced for centuries. Two nights is the least that does it justice, and it is the rare Puglian town where you will not miss having a car.

The White City: a lime-washed maze poured down a hilltop over a sea of olive trees, crowned by a rare Gothic cathedral. Beautiful in its own right and ideally placed, the trulli towns, the coast and the countryside masserie all sit within half an hour. Our pick for a first Valle d’Itria base.

The old town is one of the largest historic centres in the valley and the point is to lose the map in it: flower-filled courtyards, staircases that go nowhere, tiny bars, best at golden hour when the whitewash turns gold. The cathedral at the top is 15th-century Gothic, rare in Puglia, with one of the largest rose windows in Italy, and the Arco Scoppa beside it frames the olive plain running down to the sea. Ostuni works as a base for the whole Valle d’Itria. One practical warning: the train station sits 2.5 km below the old town, so plan a taxi or the shuttle if you arrive by rail.

The postcard: whitewashed houses on a limestone cliff straight above turquoise water, with the tiny Lama Monachile beach wedged between the rocks under the 19th-century Ponte Borbonico. Unmissable for a few hours and a boat trip into the sea caves, but it’s small, crowded and short on sand, so most people see it and sleep down the coast in Monopoli.

Lama Monachile is the photograph: a pebble cove wedged under the Bourbon bridge, tiny, so come early or late or you will be queuing for a spot on the stones. Above it the old town runs to sea terraces and the Belvedere, and the statue of Domenico Modugno stands with its arms open to the water, for the local who wrote Volare. Polignano is the easiest town in Puglia to reach without a car: it sits on the main line about forty minutes south of Bari and the station is a ten-minute walk from the old town. Half a day is enough unless you are swimming.

Polignano’s quieter, more liveable neighbour: a working fishing port with painted gozzo boats in the old harbour, a whitewashed old town of churches and piazzas and sandy beaches a short hop away. Central enough to reach Polignano, Ostuni, Alberobello and the Valle d’Itria on day trips, the best all-round coastal base.

Monopoli earns its place as a base rather than as a sight. The old town is a maze of whitewashed lanes inside the sea walls, opening onto the baroque cathedral and a set of piazzas built for the evening passeggiata, and the Porto Antico is still lined with the bright wooden gozzi the fishermen use. Cala Porta Vecchia is the argument for staying: a sandy cove directly under the walls, a two-minute walk from dinner. Bari airport is about an hour by car. May, June and September are the sweet spot, because the in-town coves fill up in high summer.

The pearl of the Adriatic: a pale Romanesque cathedral set right at the water’s edge, a working fishing harbour, a Swabian castle and an old Jewish quarter, all in warm honey-coloured stone. Smaller and calmer than Bari, elegant without being twee, it is one of the loveliest short-stop or base towns on the northern coast.

The cathedral is the reason to come and it justifies the detour on its own: Apulian Romanesque at its finest, begun around 1099 and consecrated in 1143, built of the pale local stone that carries the town’s name, standing on its own promontory over the water. Beside the harbour the Castello Svevo is a pure quadrilateral fortress begun in 1233 for Frederick II, one of his chain of Apulian castles. Trani also held one of southern Italy’s most important medieval Jewish communities, and the Scolanova Synagogue of around 1200 is one of very few medieval synagogues left in Europe. Bari is 45 minutes by car, Castel del Monte 40.

The trulli capital, whole streets of conical drystone-roofed houses, UNESCO-listed and unlike anywhere else, concentrated in the Rione Monti and Aia Piccola quarters. It fills with coach and cruise day-trippers by late morning and empties by evening, so see it early, then sleep in Ostuni, Monopoli or a countryside masseria.

Rione Monti is the postcard district and is now largely shops, so the whole trick is timing: before ten in the morning or after six in the evening, when the coach tours are gone and the light is better. Aia Piccola, the residential quarter across town, is quieter and gives a truer sense of how people actually live in a trullo. The Trullo Sovrano is the only two-storey one and the best way to see how the roof is built from the inside, and the church of Sant’Antonio, built in trullo form, repays a short uphill walk with the best rooftop view. Half a day, unless you sleep here and get the town to yourself at dawn.

The prettiest town on the Gargano, the mountainous spur in the far north: a maze of whitewashed lanes on a headland, long sandy beaches on either side and the Pizzomunno monolith standing offshore. It is a proper base for the region’s cliffs, sea caves and the Foresta Umbra, and a world away from the Salento, so it usually earns a trip of its own.

The Pizzomunno is the symbol: a solitary white limestone monolith about 25 m high, standing on the beach below the old town. Behind it the white houses and stepped alleys climb to the Swabian castle, past the Scalinata dell’Amore and the viewpoints back over the rock. The thing to book is the sea-cave boat trip along the southern cliff coast, taking in the Arco di San Felice, Vignanotica and the Baia delle Zagare, usually with a swim. Be honest about the distance before you commit: Vieste is 183 km from Bari airport, about two and a half hours, and public transport is thin. It is a stay, not a day trip.

Italy’s easternmost town, where the Adriatic meets the Ionian: a compact whitewashed old town inside Aragonese walls, a seafront castle and a cathedral with an astonishing 12th-century mosaic floor. With sandy beaches on the doorstep, it’s the most rounded base on Salento’s east coast, culture and swimming in one.

The cathedral floor is the thing nobody expects: a 12th-century mosaic covering the whole nave, a giant Tree of Life laid by the monk Pantaleone, and behind it the chapel of the 800 martyrs of 1480. On the harbour the moated Castello Aragonese gave Horace Walpole the title of the first Gothic novel. The old town is small enough to walk in an hour, and the bastioned sea walls and the lungomare are best at sunrise, this being the easternmost town in Italy. Brindisi is about an hour and ten by car; by rail you reach Lecce on the national network and continue on the slow Ferrovie del Sud Est line.

The "beautiful city" (kale polis): a baroque old town stacked on a little island and tied to the mainland by a bridge, sea on every side, a fishing harbour and a buzzing summer scene. It’s the launch pad for the Ionian’s long sandy beaches, the Salento’s liveliest seaside base.

The old town is an island, and the walk that makes it is the loop of the Riviera ramparts, past the fishermen mending nets and the spot where the day’s catch comes in, with the western side saved for sunset. Inside, the 17th-century cathedral of Sant’Agata is all carved local stone, and near the bridge the Fontana greca has long been claimed as the oldest in Italy. Beneath the town are the frantoi ipogei, rock-cut underground oil mills. Brindisi airport is an hour, Lecce 45 minutes. One honest note: Gallipoli in August is a different town from Gallipoli in June, and not everyone wants the version with the nightlife.

A perfect white circle of a town on a low hill, the name means "round place", with steep cummerse-roofed houses, geraniums on every sill and one of the prettiest centres in the valley. Small enough for an afternoon; its crisp white wine (Locorotondo DOC) and its Christmas lights are worth timing a visit for.

The centro storico is genuinely round, a concentric ring of lanes you can walk in twenty minutes, and Via Nardelli is the showpiece, past white houses with the tall pitched cummerse roofs that exist here and almost nowhere else. From the gardens of the Villa Comunale the whole Valle d’Itria opens up below, trulli and drystone walls and vineyards running towards Martina Franca. The neoclassical Chiesa Madre sits on the high point of the ring. Alberobello is fifteen minutes away, Cisternino twelve and Martina Franca fifteen, which is why this corner of Puglia is better driven than based in one spot.

The valley’s baroque counterpoint to Ostuni’s white: elegant palazzi, curling stonework, and a summer opera festival (the Festival della Valle d’Itria) that fills the courtyards. Come for the architecture and for capocollo, the prized local cured pork it’s known for.

Martina Franca is the grandest of the three valley towns and the least visited. Piazza Plebiscito is dominated by the soaring 18th-century baroque façade of the Basilica di San Martino, and the 1600s Palazzo Ducale on Piazza Roma has frescoed state rooms and a courtyard that becomes an opera stage every summer. That is the Festival della Valle d’Itria, a belcanto festival running since 1975, from mid-July to early August, and it is the one reason to plan your dates around this particular town. The Ferrovie del Sud Est line from Bari to Taranto stops here, the slow scenic route through Alberobello and Locorotondo.