Cisternino

Cisternino occupies the last rise of the southern Murgia, its whitewashed houses looking down over drystone walls, vineyards and trulli in the Valle d'Itria. The town sits within the Itria Valley DOC wine zone, and the older quarter is built as a tight knot against the edge of the plateau, its stone alleys and courtyards folded close enough together that the comparison to a North African medina has stuck. The civic tower in the main square marks where the newer town gives way to that older core, a single threshold between the two.

Cisternino, a Cittaslow member since 2003, was named Cittaslow City of the Year in 2014, a designation that formalizes what the town already does at the butcher-restaurants of the old quarter: meat grilled to order and eaten at a counter or a side table, nothing rushed. Between the drystone valley below, the huddled white quarter above, and a civic identity built on not hurrying, the town reads as a place organized around slowness at every scale, from its walls to its kitchens.

From Bari / Brindisi (BRI), about 1h 18m by car.

Naples / Salerno (NAP) is about 4h 11m away.

By car from the centre of Bari 1 hour, Lecce 1h 16m or Salerno 4 hours.

There is a railway station in the comune, so you can arrive without a car.

Coming from Bari?

Coming by train into Taranto? Cisternino is about 46 minutes away by road.

Every town within reach of Bari / Brindisi airport.