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Puglia/Apulia - General Info
When the Pugliesi say their land will “cast a spell”, they are not just mouthing tourist board keywords. They mean that Puglia is, literally, a magical place. Fish dishes are aphrodisiacs and the cone houses, called trulli (singular domains dating back to pre-history no less), are attributed with mystical powers. Millions of knotted olive trees, some planted 600 years ago, blanket the rust-tinted soil like legions of drab-suited soldiers. Some locals say that if you stare at the trunks long enough, miraculous images will appear.
Puglia is the long strip of land, 400km from north to south, that makes up the "heel" of Italy. A peninsula flanked by the Adriatic and Ionian, “the land of two seas” was for centuries a strategic province, colonized, invaded and conquered (like its neighbours, Calabria and Sicily) by just about every major power of the day, from the Greeks through to the Spanish. As elsewhere in the South, each ruling dynasty left its own distinctive mark on the landscape and architecture - as seen, for example, in the surviving traces of Roman agricultural schemes and the fortified medieval towns. There's no escaping some of the historical influences in Puglia. Perhaps most distinctive are the Saracenic kasbah-like quarters of many towns and cities, the one at Bari being the biggest and most atmospheric.
The Normans endowed Puglia with splendidly ornate cathedrals; there's one at Trani which skilfully blends many strands of regional craft traditions from north and south. And the Baroque exuberance of towns like Lecce and Martina Franca are testament to the Spanish legacy. But if there's one symbol of Puglia that stands out, it's the imposing castles built by the Swabian Frederick II, all over the province - foremost of which are the Castel del Monte and the remnants of the palace at Lucera.
Clean seas and reliable sunshine have made Puglia a popular spot for holidays. The cities, however, including Bari, have little that's characteristic enough to warrant long stays. The very southern tip, the Salentine peninsula , is rocky and dry, more Greek than Italian, while there's plenty of barren mountain scenery in the undulating plateau of Le Murge , in the centre of the province. The best escape, though, is north to the mountains, forests and beaches of the Gargano promontory with some of the finest unpolluted sand and sea to be found anywhere on the Adriatic.
