Puglia & Basilicata
Why go?
The heel of Italy has, until recently, been overlooked by most
visitors to the country – but it's well worth considering as
a more exotic and less gentrified alternative to Tuscany, Umbria or
the Italian Lakes. You get the same wealth of history, spanning
from the Romans (whose Via Egnazia ran down the Adriatic Coast to
Brindisi) via the Saracens (whose labyrinthine whitewashed
architecture is evident in the southerly hilltowns) and the Normans
(who built splendid cathedrals in all the major cities) to
wonderful Baroque and Renaissance gems (notably the exuberant town
of Lecce). Sprinkled among them, and among endless groves of
venerably chunky olive trees, are the distinctly Puglian trulli:
simple dry-stone storage huts with conical roofs – a bit like
miniature oast-houses or limestone igloos or outsized beehives,
depending where you come from.
Puglia has the added bonus of some of Italy's finest beaches: the
sandy horseshoe bays of the Torre Guaceto nature reserve, the
rugged limestone cliffs of the Gargano peninsula and the azure
shallows of the Salentine peninsula (at the southerly tip) stand
out from the more crowded and trendy lidi (beach clubs with
music, volleyball, watersports etc). Come in spring or autumn and
you could get one of these secluded coves all to yourself – a
true rarity in Italy. Come in July – August and you can
hobnob with the Milanese jetset, who have made Puglia their new
summer playground and tanning salon.
The cuisine ain't half bad either: refined but authentic farmers'
recipes using tasty, local ingredients. Think fresh seafood (bream,
mussels), organic veg (courgettes, onions, plump cherry tomatoes),
aubergine involtini wrapped around molten
cacciocavallo cheese, doughnuts stuffed with ricotta and
flaked almonds, all manner of pasta (ear-shaped orechiette
and wire-thin fricelli) and – in spring – the
smoothest chick-pea purée imaginable. Add fresh fruit or
gelati, wash down with pugliese red or rosé wines or
limoncello liqueur (not forgetting the superb olive oil), and
you're in gastro-heaven.
For British visitors, there are cheap direct flights from Stansted
to Bari and Brindisi with Ryanair, making it every bit as
accessible as the north. You could even pop over for a (long)
weekend of spring or autumn sunshine – though, as always in
Italy, we'd recommend you avoid August, when everyone flocks to the
seaside resorts.