Travel
Puglia offers rare urban buzz in Italy's rural heel
It was the unique architecture as well as the panoramic views from the hilltop towns that impressed us on a tour of Puglia
July 23, 2015 13:26
It was the unique architecture as well as the panoramic views from the hilltop towns that impressed us on a tour of Puglia
July 23, 2015 13:26A Magen David is the last thing you'd expect to stumble across in a remote Italian city famous for its baroque churches. But Lecce was a throbbing centre of Jewish life 500 years ago - and now the Jews are back in Puglia, their footsteps are being traced, unearthed and commemorated.
Aptly for a city of elegant shops and a hum of urban buzz, rare in this rural region in Italy's heel, the star in Lecce marked a former merchant's house built on the site of a mediaeval synagogue and mikvao't whose walls are still standing.
While Lecce is worth a visit to peep at these ancient walls, to admire densely carved baroque buildings and sip an iced espresso layered with almond milk at the groovy Avio Bar (ask for a "Leccese"), Puglia is really all about its coastline and idyllic little hilltop towns. You could drive between them all, but Puglia is also renowned for its cuisine. A Back-Roads Touring minibus like the one that took us on a Slow Food tour of the region, pauses daily at legendary local restaurants for a showcase of regional specialities - and this is a better and safer way to soak up the food, wine and scenery on a first visit.
It all starts in Bari, another elegant city with a culinary showcase of its own at Terranima, where organic vegetables are the star of the show. Puglia's cucina povera, the traditional food of the poor, is veggie heaven, from its mashed fava beans, a local take on hummus, to the crudities they're served with.
What never comes with hummus in the Middle East, though, is coco mera, a slightly sweet cross between a cucumber and a melon, or the wilted bitter greens known as cicoria, also enjoyed with fava mash in Puglia.
Getting there
Package: Back-Roads Touring offers its next Slow Food tour of Puglia in October from £1,695 including flights, five nights' b&b, winery visits and most meals. Tel: 020 8987 0990
What Brits do know well, thanks to Selfridges food hall and trendy Italian restaurants, is burata, that phenomenally creamy take on mozzarella that appears on every antipasto in Puglia and makes a meal in itself with dense local bread, fruity-bitter little black Leccino olives and the tiny sweet tomatoes for which all of southern Italy is famous.
Martina Franca, a lovely little hilltop town, is another great place to taste local specialities, in traditional style at la Tana and with an elegant modern flourish at Coco Pazzo. Here chef-owner Stefano is surely bound for a Michelin star with food best enjoyed alfresco in a hidden, magical little piazzetta at the foot of the old town.
Two jewels on Martina Franca's doorstep are Alberobello, invaded daily by droves of tourists, and the relatively unknown Locorotondo, with its hilltop cafés dotted between an elegant church and gardens offering a stunning vista of the countryside.
Alberobello is best known for its trulli, the strange, conical, whitewashed houses with pointy slate roofs seen nowhere else in Italy.
They have made this tiny town a World Heritage Site, but the highly commercial side of the main drag is less atmospheric than the residential side, where it's worth climbing the gentle hill to meander quiet alleys and get up close and personal with these strange, gnome-like structures.
Despite the hordes, Alberobello's La Cantina is anything but a tourist trap - awash with local specialities prepared on the spot before us in an open kitchen.
As you hit the coastline, the Adriatic (where the resort and ancient port of Otranto also has Jewish associations) glitters to the east, the Ionian sparkles to the south, and the white sugar-cube architecture - which makes Puglia so similar to some islands of the Greeks who first settled here and later the Andalucia of the Spanish - persists. Seafood dominates the menu, nowhere more so than in Gallipoli, a delightful little port town that supplies the nation with fish, the finest of which is displayed daily at Al Pescatore, an elegant restaurant commanding a seafront spot in the historic old city. It is steps away from the Relais de Corte Palmieri, our base in an atmospheric old Gallipoli mansion. Beyond lies a lively central piazza crammed with outdoor restaurants, of which Pane Olio e Fantasia is recommended for a more informal fishy feast.
While our tour started with a dip across the border to Matera, a jewel of a town studded with hilltop caves in neighbouring Basilicata, I wished we had instead travelled north of Bari to Trani, at the heart of the revival of Jewish life in Puglia. Here there is both a functioning, rededicated mediaeval synagogue and another serving as a Jewish museum, as well as lively port action. But it could easily be added on, as the town is served by rail from Bari, which leaves you to enjoy a siesta.
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