With events
Sagre and feste in Apulia
13 towns
Each town page lists what happens there and the month it happens in, with the source. Always check with the town before you travel.
Bisceglie
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani · 16 m
An Adriatic port town between Trani and Molfetta, named for Roman watchtowers, with five dolmens around it and a Norman cathedral begun in 1073.
Oria
Province: Brindisi · 166 m
A Messapian acropolis between Taranto and Brindisi crowned by Frederick II's triangular castle, home to one of medieval Europe's oldest Jewish communities.
Trani
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani · 7 m
The Adriatic port whose pink-white Romanesque cathedral stands on the water, built for a Greek pilgrim who died here in 1094.
Castellaneta
Province: Taranto · 235 m
A cliff-edge Murge town at 235 meters above the Gravina Grande canyon, birthplace of Rudolph Valentino in 1895, with a Bandiera Blu Ionian marina.
Fasano
Province: Brindisi · 118 m
A Brindisi-province town running from the Adriatic up to the Itria escarpment, holding a Roman coastal city, a wooded highpoint, and Europe's second-largest safari park.
Giovinazzo
Province: Bari · 7 m
An Adriatic fishing port twenty kilometers northwest of Bari, with a Norman cathedral and a Bronze Age dolmen in the agro inland.
Isole Tremiti
Province: Foggia · 116 m
An Adriatic archipelago of five islands twenty-two kilometers off the Gargano, the only Italian commune scattered across an open-sea group.
Lecce
Province: Lecce · 49 m
The Baroque capital of the Salento, ninety-four thousand people on the Lecce-stone plain, carving its façades in honey limestone since 1500.
Martina Franca
Province: Taranto · 431 m
Puglia's second Baroque city after Lecce, on the Itria ridge at 431 meters, with an opera festival in its ducal courtyard since 1975.
Melendugno
Province: Lecce · 36 m
Salento's archaeological-beach comune: 17 km of Adriatic coast in Lecce province combining karst pools, Bronze-Age-to-Messapian ruins, and a run of blue-flagged sand.
Putignano
Province: Bari · 372 m
Putignano has run its carnival continuously since 1394, the longest unbroken run in Europe, staged in a Murgia town with a karst cave threaded beneath its own centro storico.
Rodi Garganico
Province: Foggia · 42 m
A Gargano promontory town above the Adriatic, citrus capital of the peninsula, with DOP oranges and lemons grown on the terraces below it.
San Severo
Province: Foggia · 86 m
The Daunia wine capital on the Tavoliere, home to Puglia's first DOC of 1968 and a Carnevale of fanoia explosions known across the south.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Cicala
Province: Catanzaro
A village of 887 people at 829 meters, founded in 1616 by farmers asking for land.
Fossombrone
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
An inland Marchigiano town on the Metauro river, layered over a Roman colony with a Renaissance ducal court rising above it.
Bagnoli del Trigno
Province: Isernia
The 'Pearl of Molise', a 637-resident borgo built into and around a massive limestone outcrop above the Trigno valley, with a medieval castle rebuilt on its summit.
Varenna
Province: Lecco
A fishing village founded in 769 on the Lecco arm of Lake Como, with a steep grid of streets falling into the water.
Rocca di Botte
Province: L'Aquila
At 750 meters on the Carseolani slopes between Abruzzo and Lazio, the birthplace of an eleventh-century hermit and a fief of the Colonna.