Coastal towns
Coastal towns in Apulia
19 towns
Towns on the sea. A cliff town high above the water counts here rather than under mountains, because the sea is why you would go.
Carovigno
Province: Brindisi · 161 m
An upper Salento hill town between Brindisi and Ostuni, with a marine reserve on its coast.
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.
Ugento
Province: Lecce · 108 m
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Peschici
Province: Foggia · 91 m
A Gargano cliff-top village above the Adriatic, white houses spilling toward the sea and trabucchi on the headlands.
Mattinata
Province: Foggia · 75 m
The only Apulian town that faces south on the Adriatic, the white amphitheater of the eastern Gargano beneath Monte Sacro.
Campi Salentina
Province: Lecce · 47 m
A Salento plain town fifteen kilometers north of Lecce, rebuilt after the Saracen raids of 926 and later raised to a marquisate.
Vieste
Province: Foggia · 43 m
The Gargano headland of whitewashed alleys on a white limestone cliff, with the Pizzomunno sea stack standing 26 meters offshore.
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.
Vernole
Province: Lecce · 38 m
A Salento commune ten kilometers from Lecce whose frazione of Acaya is the only Renaissance fortified town in southern Italy.
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.
Maruggio
Province: Taranto · 35 m
A fortified Borghi più Belli borgo on a low Ionian hill in Taranto province, built around a Knights of Malta commanderie that ran the Order's southern Italian affairs for six centuries.
Polignano a Mare
Province: Bari · 24 m
The Adriatic cliff town thirty kilometers south of Bari, built on a twenty-metre limestone bluff, birthplace of Domenico Modugno.
Otranto
Province: Lecce · 20 m
Italy's easternmost city, eighty kilometers from Albania, with a Norman mosaic floor and the bones of 813 martyrs in the cathedral.
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.
Gallipoli
Province: Lecce · 12 m
The Ionian beach city on a limestone island, Greek Kallipolis meaning beautiful city, tied to the mainland by a seventeenth-century bridge.
Monopoli
Province: Bari · 9 m
An Adriatic walled town forty kilometers south of Bari, the Charles V castle on the headland, 156 square kilometers of coastline behind it.
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.
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.
Trinitapoli
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani · 5 m
A Tavoliere town between the Saline di Margherita and the Ofanto, sitting on a Bronze Age sanctuary that still surprises archaeologists.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Visso
Province: Macerata
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, a medieval village drawn by M.C. Escher in 1929 keeps a May ritual folklorists trace to Demeter.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila
A Marsica town at 735 meters, on the rim of the drained Fucino basin, that lost five thousand of six thousand people in a single morning in 1915.