The best coastal towns you can reach by train within 90 minutes of Bari
Puglia's Adriatic edge is built from the same pale stone as the sea floor it sits on, and in late afternoon the whole coast turns the colour of raw pastry. The towns here are working harbours before they are anything else: boats hauled up on slipways, crates of anchovies and sea urchins going straight to the fish market, focaccia barese sold by weight from a hatch in the wall. Swimming is off rock platforms and small stone-cut coves rather than long sand, which keeps the water clear and cold well into June. The railway runs close enough to the water that most stations sit a short walk from the cathedral, the port, or both.
Most people arriving in Bari head inland instead, to Alberobello and the trulli, and by mid-morning in July the coach parks above Rione Monti are full and the lanes move at shuffling pace. Ostuni takes the overflow, its white old town photographed from the same three viewpoints. Both are worth seeing, and both are best out of season, early, on a weekday. The problem is not the places themselves but the fact that everyone reaches them within the same two hours of the same morning.
The coast keeps going in both directions, and the trains keep stopping. North towards Trani the shoreline is cathedrals and Swabian castles standing in salt air; south past Monopoli it breaks into inlets and sea caves. These are towns where the sea is at the end of the main street, and where you can arrive on a regional service, eat lunch by the harbour and be back in Bari for dinner. Fewer people make the trip, largely because the famous inland names get there first.
Of the 18 communes we have mapped in within 90 minutes of Bari, 6 qualify as coastal towns you can reach by train: each sits directly on the sea, and we have confirmed each is reachable without a car. The smallest, Polignano a Mare, has 17,531 residents.
If you are still choosing, we have also written The best coastal towns with a serious restaurant in Puglia and The best olive oil towns that eat well within 90 minutes of Bari.
Polignano a Mare
Why visit Polignano a Mare
Polignano a Mare sits on a limestone cliff twenty to twenty-seven meters above the Adriatic, thirty kilometers south of Bari. The historic centre is a maze of whitewashed lanes cut into the rock, dropping down to the Lama Monachile cove, the narrow beach between two rock walls and under the arches of the Roman bridge of the Via Traiana.
Archaeology in the Santa Barbara district shows continuous settlement since prehistory, and the site has been identified with the ancient Greek Neapolis of Apulia, possibly founded by Dionysius II of Syracuse in the fourth century BC. Julius Caesar features in another origin claim along the Via Traiana.
Domenico Modugno, who wrote and sang "Nel blu dipinto di blu" and won the 1958 Grammy with it, was born here in 1928; his statue stands on the lungomare that bears his name. The Grotta Palazzese, a sea cave under the old town, has held a restaurant since the eighteenth century when the Leto princes used it for banquets.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Polignano a Mare
- Lama Monachile. Narrow cove between two cliff walls in the centre of town, under the arches of the Roman bridge of the Via Traiana, the town's signature postcard.
- Centro storico. Whitewashed old town on the limestone cliff, narrow lanes, balconies hanging over the sea, and three surviving medieval gates.
- Grotta Palazzese. Sea cave under the cliff used by the Leto princes for banquets in the eighteenth century, now a restaurant carved into the rock.
How to get to Polignano a Mare
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Bari is roughly 36 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through September is the season the cliffs and the cove work: warm sea, long evenings, the Lama Monachile crowded by ten in the morning in July and August and impossible to swim from after noon. June and September are the better months, the water already warm and the day-tripper buses thinner. October keeps the light and empties the centro storico.
Giovinazzo
Why visit Giovinazzo
Giovinazzo sits on the Adriatic twenty kilometers northwest of Bari, between Molfetta and the Bari coastal belt, at 7 meters. The Romans called it Natolium, fortifying the site under Trajan in 102 AD on what may be the older Peucetian settlement of Netium.
The Norman cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta was built between 1125 and 1180 in the Puglian Romanesque style and consecrated in 1283; it still holds the Byzantine icon of the Madonna of Corsignano, the patron, celebrated through August. The medieval centro storico runs in narrow stone lanes around the harbor, where the small fishing fleet still ties up below the sea wall.
Five kilometers inland, the Dolmen di San Silvestro is a Bronze Age funerary chamber from around 1500 BC, set in a grove of olive and carob, the agro that makes Giovinazzo a Città dell'Olio. The town hosts one of the few elite roller hockey clubs in Italy.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Giovinazzo
- Concattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. Norman cathedral of 1125-1180 in Puglian Romanesque, consecrated in 1283, with the Byzantine icon of the Madonna of Corsignano above the main altar.
- Centro storico. Medieval old town in narrow stone lanes wrapping the small port, walled on the seaward side and rebuilt after Norman reconquest in the eleventh century.
- Dolmen di San Silvestro. Bronze Age funerary dolmen from around 1500 BC, set on a Murgia terrace among olive and carob trees five kilometers inland from town.
How to get to Giovinazzo
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Bari is roughly 31 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through June and September are the best months on this stretch of Adriatic coast, with warm sea and mild evenings. July and August touch thirty-five degrees and the small harbor fills with weekenders from Bari; the centro storico stays cooler in the lanes than out on the wall. The festa for the Madonna of Corsignano runs through August. Sagra del Panino della Nonna falls in August.
Fasano
Why visit Fasano
The main centre sits at 118 meters, a hinge point in a wide municipal territory that runs from the Adriatic shore up to the Itria escarpment, home to thirty-eight thousand residents spread across three distinct landscapes rather than one compact town. The coast holds the abandoned city, inhabited from the fifteenth century BC and left empty by the Middle Ages, its excavated stone now sitting a short distance from the museum built to house what came out of the ground there.
Inland and uphill, the wooded escarpment climbs to become the highest ground in the province, the same slopes that carry the wildlife park across its carob and olive scrubland. Further along the shore, the fishing port turned resort gives the territory its beach frontage.
The pattern is coastal city, wooded highland, coastal resort, three pieces of a single municipality that never behaves like a single place. What the town offers is that range within one boundary: Roman ruins at sea level, a panorama at the province's highest point, and a working beachfront, none of them a detour from the others.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Fasano
- Parco Archeologico di Egnazia. Ruins spread across eighty hectares along the coast, with the Via Traiana running through the site alongside the basilica and a cryptoporticus still traceable underfoot.
- Museo Nazionale Archeologico Giuseppe Andreassi. Museum standing next to the archaeological park, holding the objects pulled from the excavations: Messapian inscriptions, Roman finds, and material spanning the long abandonment of the city.
- Selva di Fasano. Wooded escarpment reaching between 411 and 414 meters, the ground rising from carob and olive scrub to open views that give the terrace its nickname.
How to get to Fasano
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Bari is roughly 52 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through September is the working season on this stretch of the Adriatic: warm sea, the Bandiera Blu beaches at Savelletri operating, the Selva ten degrees cooler than the coast for an evening break. July and August fill the coast with Italian holidaymakers; Egnazia exposed on the seafront is brutal between noon and three. April and October are quieter alternatives with the sea still mild, the archaeological park at its photographic best, and the olive harvest opening across the surrounding masserie. Festa Della Mietitura E Trebbiatura Del Grano falls in August.
Monopoli
Why visit Monopoli
Monopoli sits on the Adriatic forty kilometers southeast of Bari, a walled town extending from the sea fifteen kilometers inland to the first Murge hills. The territory covers 156 square kilometers with sandy coves, cliff sections and the old port at the centro storico.
The site has been inhabited since the Epigravettian, around fifteen thousand years ago; a fortified Messapian settlement existed by 500 BC. The name comes from the Greek for 'only city,' which Monopoli inherited when refugees from nearby Gnatia arrived after the Ostrogoth king Totila destroyed it in 545.
Byzantines, Normans and Hohenstaufen followed. In 1484 Venice took the town and ran it as a trading port between Bari and Brindisi for sixty years.
The Castello Carlo V on the headland and the resistance to the imperial Armada in 1529, which forced the Spaniards to abandon a three-month siege, both belong to that century of fortification.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Monopoli
- Castello Carlo V. Sixteenth-century pentagonal fortress on the headland above the old port, built by the Spanish to defend against Ottoman raids and Venetian return.
- Basilica Cattedrale Maria Santissima della Madia. Eighteenth-century baroque cathedral on the old town's central square, raised over earlier medieval foundations, the city's principal monument.
- Centro storico. Walled old town on the small headland, white limestone alleys, the cathedral and the castle facing each other across narrow lanes above the port.
How to get to Monopoli
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Bari is roughly 42 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through September is the working coastal season, water warm enough for swimming and the old port quay populated until late. July and August push past thirty-three degrees and the centro storico fills with day-trippers from Bari and Polignano; weekends in August are shoulder to shoulder along the quay. June and September are the sane choices, mild evenings and the same water without the crush.
Bisceglie
Why visit Bisceglie
Bisceglie sits on the Adriatic coast between Trani and Molfetta, thirty-five kilometers north of Bari, at sea level on a low limestone shelf with the Murge rising inland. The name probably derives from the Latin vigilae, watchtowers, recording the Roman coastal lookouts that preceded the medieval town.
The walled centro storico sits between the cathedral and the port, its stone the same limestone as the dolmens scattered inland, which ties the old town physically to the countryside around it. The harbour below still works, split between commercial fishing and pleasure boats, and the relics beneath the cathedral were moved into their purpose-built crypt under three altars in 1167, a century after the building was begun.
Bisceglie also carries Spighe Verdi for its olive countryside and Città dell'Olio for the Coratina groves that surround it, alongside its recognition for the sea. What holds the town together is the limestone shelf itself: it carried the Roman watchtowers that gave Bisceglie its name, it was cut into dolmens by the Bronze Age communities who ringed the commune with tombs, and it still separates the working port from the olive groves inland, so that fishing, stone, and oil remain the three things the town has always stood on.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Bisceglie
- Dolmen della Chianca. Bronze Age megalithic tomb with a 10-meter passage and a burial cell two by 1.6 meters, the largest and best-preserved Italian dolmen, three kilometers inland.
- Concattedrale di San Pietro. Norman cathedral begun in 1073 by Peter II of Trani, finished in 1295, now co-cathedral in the Archdiocese of Trani-Barletta-Bisceglie.
- Torre Maestra. Norman square donjon of the twelfth century, twenty-seven meters tall, the surviving keep of the medieval citadel above the port.
How to get to Bisceglie
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Bari is roughly 38 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through September are the months the Adriatic warms enough to swim and the coastal restaurants stretch onto the sea wall. July and August push past thirty-three degrees and the beaches fill on weekends with day-trippers from Bari and Trani. June and September are the steadier months, water still warm, crowds thinner. Festa di Pantano Ripalta falls in August.
Trani
Why visit Trani
Trani sits on the Adriatic forty-five kilometers west-northwest of Bari, one of the three capitals of the Barletta-Andria-Trani province. The cathedral is the reason most travelers come.
Dedicated to Saint Nicholas the Pilgrim, a Greek who died in Trani in 1094, the church was begun in 1159 and built from the local calcareous tuff that quarries pink-white almost to the point of looking bleached. The fifty-nine-meter bell tower was finished in the fourteenth century; the central bronze door is a 1175 work by Barisano da Trani.
The Castello Svevo on the same harbor was built by Frederick II between 1233 and 1249 to guard the roadstead. Trani's eleventh- and twelfth-century maritime republic linked the Crusader Adriatic to the East and produced the Ordinamenta maris, one of the earliest western sea codes.
The cathedral square at dusk, sea on one side and Castello Svevo on the other, is the photograph.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Trani
- Cattedrale di San Nicola Pellegrino. Romanesque cathedral begun in 1159 on a sea-edge platform, built of local pink-white tuff, with a fifty-nine-meter bell tower and the 1175 bronze door by Barisano da Trani.
- Castello Svevo. Frederick II fortress of 1233-1249 on a rock at the center of the harbor, designed by Filippo Cinardo, later a royal court seat and provincial prison until 1974.
- Porto e lungomare. Working fishing harbor lined with palazzi and trattorie, with the cathedral at one end and the Castello Svevo at the other.
How to get to Trani
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Bari is roughly 38 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May, June, September and October are the easiest months on the harbor: warm without humidity, the cathedral square workable from morning into the evening, the Adriatic still swimmable. July and August are hot and busy, with cruise day-trippers and weekend Bari traffic taking the port. The fish auction at the molo continues through the summer; the local moscato bottling runs from August into September. Festa di San Nicola Pellegrino falls in August.
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