The best towns worth staying overnight that eat well in Puglia

Otranto

Why visit Otranto

Otranto sits at sea level on a small promontory thirty kilometers southeast of Lecce, the easternmost city of Italy and the closest mainland point to Albania across the eighty-kilometer Strait of Otranto. The Cattedrale di Santa Maria Annunziata, consecrated in 1088, holds a mosaic floor laid between 1163 and 1165 by the monk Pantaleone for Archbishop Gionata.

About 800,000 tesserae across the three naves depict Adam and Eve, Noah, the Tower of Babel and a Tree of Life with biblical, classical and chivalric figures: Alexander the Great, Arthur, the months of the year. On 14 August 1480 an Ottoman force under Gedik Ahmed Pasha took the city; 813 inhabitants who refused to convert were beheaded on the Colle della Minerva and their bones are now in the cathedral, in seven glass-fronted recesses.

Pope Francis canonized them in 2013. The Castello Aragonese, raised by Ferdinand I of Aragon between 1485 and 1498, is the response: a five-sided fortress with a moat, built specifically to prevent a second sack.

Retrogusto, L' Altro Baffo, Umberto 1972 have been named by a guide.

What to see in Otranto

• Cattedrale di Santa Maria Annunziata. Norman cathedral consecrated in 1088, with Pantaleone's mosaic floor of 1163-1165 and the relics of the 813 martyrs of 1480 in seven glass recesses.
• Castello Aragonese. Five-sided Aragonese fortress raised 1485-1498 by Ferdinand I after the Ottoman sack, irregular plan with moat running the full perimeter.
• Chiesa di San Pietro. Byzantine cross-plan church in the centro storico, ninth-tenth century, with three apses and frescoes from the tenth through fifteenth centuries.

How to get to Otranto

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Taranto is roughly 137 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Otranto

Oria

Why visit Oria

Oria sits at 166 meters on a Salento ridge between Taranto and Brindisi, north of Manduria and southeast of the ancient Taras. The town was Hyria, one of the principal Messapian cities, before the Romans absorbed the region.

Frederick II rebuilt the castle on the Messapian acropolis between 1227 and 1233; the triangular plan he chose is unique in southern Italian military architecture, with three towers, the Quadrata (Frederician), the Del Cavaliere and the Del Salto (both Angevin additions). Oria also held one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe, a study center where philosophy, the Talmud, Greek, Latin, medicine and natural science were taught from the ninth century.

Shefatya ben Amitai and Shabbethai Donnolo, two of the first Hebrew writers native to Europe, both lived and worked here. The Jewish quarter, the Giudecca, still organizes the southern edge of the centro storico.

Osteria Luce, Masseria Palombara, Fuori Porta have been named by a guide.

What to see in Oria

• Castello Svevo di Federico II. Frederician castle of 1227-1233 on the Messapian acropolis, triangular plan with three towers, one Frederician and two Angevin, the town's defining monument.
• Cattedrale di Oria. Eighteenth-century Baroque cathedral raised over earlier medieval foundations, the seat of the diocese of Oria since the Lombard era.
• Giudecca. Old Jewish quarter on the southern flank of the centro storico, organized around the Vico degli Ebrei, a continuous medieval settlement from the ninth century.

How to get to Oria

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Taranto is roughly 46 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Oria

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.

Pashà, Meraviglioso, Jamantè and 2 more have been named by a guide.

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.

Everything we know about Polignano a Mare

Ostuni

Why visit Ostuni

Ostuni sits at 218 meters on three hills above the Adriatic coastal plain, eight kilometers inland in the southeastern Murge. The whitewashing that gives it the name Città Bianca is medieval in origin, a hygienic measure against plague that survived as the local building convention; the entire centro storico is painted white in lime every spring and reads as a single bright mass from the surrounding olive country.

The territory has been inhabited since the Paleolithic; the Messapii founded the urban nucleus before the Romans absorbed the region. The town joined the Norman County of Lecce in 996.

In 1507 it passed to Isabella, Duchess of Bari, then to her daughter Bona Sforza, queen of Poland, who fortified the coast with watchtowers against Ottoman raids in 1539. The Cattedrale, a late-Gothic facade with a rose window of twenty-four rays, anchors the upper town.

The olive landscape around the commune holds some of the oldest cultivated trees in the Mediterranean.

Osteria Piazzetta Cattedrale, Cielo, Restaurant 700 and 3 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Ostuni

• Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. Late fifteenth-century Gothic cathedral at the highest point of the centro storico, with a rose window of twenty-four rays unique in Puglia.
• Centro storico. Whitewashed old town on three hills, lime-painted every spring against plague tradition, the single bright mass that names the Città Bianca.
• Piazza della Libertà. Lower civic square outside the medieval walls, with the Guglia di Sant'Oronzo, an early eighteenth-century baroque obelisk to the patron saint.

How to get to Ostuni

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Taranto is roughly 64 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Ostuni

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.

Pentole e Provette, Due Camini a Borgo Egnazia, Raparossa have been named by a guide.

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.

Everything we know about Fasano

Martina Franca

Why visit Martina Franca

Martina Franca sits at 431 meters on the southern edge of the Valle d'Itria, on the border between the provinces of Taranto, Bari and Brindisi. The town was founded in 1310 by Philip I of Anjou, Prince of Taranto, who granted franchigie, tax exemptions, to settlers willing to repopulate the hill, hence Franca in the name.

The centro storico is the densest concentration of Rococo and late-Baroque architecture in Puglia after Lecce: wrought-iron balconies, carved stone portals, churches built or rebuilt after the 1743 earthquake. The Palazzo Ducale of 1668, raised on the foundations of a 1338 medieval castle, is the seat of the municipal offices and the open-air courtyard where the Festival della Valle d'Itria has been performed every July and August since 1975, founded specifically to recover rare and forgotten operas.

The Basilica di San Martino, begun in 1747, is the most complete example of Martinese Rococo. The surrounding plateau makes a Martina Franca DOC white wine and a strong dry-cured capocollo IGP.

Bros' Trattoria, Bros', Four Seasons and 1 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Martina Franca

• Palazzo Ducale. Built in 1668 on the foundations of a 1338 medieval castle, town hall and home of the Festival della Valle d'Itria summer opera courtyard.
• Basilica di San Martino. Eighteenth-century basilica begun in 1747 after the 1743 earthquake, the most complete Martinese Rococo monument and museum of liturgical art.
• Piazza Roma and Piazza Maria Immacolata. The two main squares of the centro storico, linked by Via Cavour, lined with eighteenth-century palazzi and the town's main passeggiata.

How to get to Martina Franca

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Taranto is roughly 38 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Martina Franca

Lecce

Why visit Lecce

Lecce sits on the Salento plain at 49 meters above sea level, twelve kilometers inland from the Adriatic, the provincial capital. The Messapian settlement of Lupiae stood on this site by the eighth century BC.

Rome took it in the third century BC, and Hadrian later moved the settlement three kilometers away and renamed it Licea, so the modern city occupies a site distinct from either of its named predecessors. The walled centro storico is ringed by Charles V's fortifications, entered from the north through the Porta Napoli arch and anchored on its eastern edge by his castle, built over older Norman foundations.

Within those walls the Baroque churches and squares sit close together, the cathedral square closed in on three sides while the amphitheater lies open and half-sunk in the middle of the newer square that formed around it. The University runs a strong humanities program, and the seafront at San Cataldo, some distance from the old center, carries Lecce's Bandiera Blu.

What holds the town together is the stone itself: soft enough to carve finely, hard enough once cut to last, so that a Messapian and Roman settlement site became, centuries later, the surface on which the south's most elaborate Baroque was cut.

Primo Restaurant, Duo Ristorante, Gimmi Restaurant and 11 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Lecce

• Basilica di Santa Croce. Worked for nearly two hundred years to completion in 1695, the façade carved with cherubs, monsters and allegories layered so densely that the wall surface almost disappears beneath them.
• Piazza del Duomo. Closed on three sides, the only enclosed cathedral square of its kind in Puglia, gathering the Duomo, Campanile, Bishop's Palace and Seminary into one shared courtyard rather than an open street front.
• Piazza Sant'Oronzo. The city's central square, built around a column brought from the Appian Way to honor the patron saint, with the excavated amphitheater floor sitting below street level at its edge.

How to get to Lecce

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Taranto is roughly 95 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Lecce