The culture of Puglia is three thousand years of layers laid one on top of the other: Messapians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Normans, Swabians. Four UNESCO World Heritage sites, a language of Greek origin still spoken inland in the Salento, the pizzica, one of the oldest carnivals in Italy, Apulian Romanesque cathedrals and the papier-mâché of Lecce: a region that keeps surprising you.
The culture of Puglia, then and now
From antiquity onwards Puglia has lived off its position between West and East. The heel of Italy, stretched out towards the Balkans and Greece, was seen as a bridge between two worlds, and it still is. Its culture carries both the Western inheritance, Roman and Germanic, and the Eastern one, Greek and Byzantine, woven together in a way you will not find anywhere else in Italy.
Popular culture, for its part, was handed down in families far more than in books. People here lived on their own strength and their own know-how, building their future on whatever the land and the sea could give them.
A borderland, not a backwater. Reaching out towards the Balkans, close to Greece and open to the Mediterranean, Puglia never treated its position as a limit. It was the engine of a cultural layering with no equal: Messapians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Normans, Swabians, Angevins and Spaniards all left deep marks here, each one laid over the last without erasing it.
Culture and education today
Today Puglia is a region of culture in the full sense. Lecce was Italian Capital of Culture in 2015 and was among the finalists for European Capital of Culture 2019, recognition for what anyone who knows the city already understands: Lecce is not only beautiful Baroque architecture, it is a living cultural scene. Lecce Baroque, carved in a soft limestone that allows decoration impossible elsewhere, is probably the most recognisable artistic legacy Puglia has given the world.
Young people who want to study in the region can choose between several major universities:
- Politecnico di Bari — the region’s technical university, for engineering and technical studies
- University of Bari Aldo Moro — the largest and oldest in the region
- University of the Salento — based mainly in Lecce, and known by this name since 2007
- University of Foggia — in the main city of the Daunia, the north of Puglia
Valenzano, near Bari, is home to Tecnopolis, presented as the first science and technology park founded in Italy. It works on technology transfer and digital public services: an Apulian centre of excellence that is little known outside the region.
The UNESCO sites of Puglia
Puglia has four sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Each one tells a different chapter of the region’s cultural history.
- The trulli of Alberobello (1996) — limestone houses with conical roofs, built dry without mortar, a building technique found nowhere else in the world. More than 1,400 trulli in the old town of Alberobello, still lived in.
- Castel del Monte (1996) — the octagonal fortress of Frederick II near Andria, the emblem of Swabian architecture of the Middle Ages. Its perfect shape is still debated: an astronomical calendar, or a statement of imperial power?
- Monte Sant’Angelo (2011) — the cave sanctuary dedicated to the Archangel Michael on the Gargano, part of the UNESCO site “Longobards in Italy. Places of the Power”. It is one of the oldest Christian pilgrimage sites in the Western world.
- The ancient beech forests of the Foresta Umbra (2017) — in the heart of the Gargano, these primary beech woods belong to the serial UNESCO site of the ancient beech forests of the Carpathians and other regions of Europe. Centuries-old beeches, in a forest that was there before people arrived.
Four UNESCO sites in one region. Alberobello and Castel del Monte joined the List in the same year, 1996; Monte Sant’Angelo in 2011; the Foresta Umbra in 2017. Four sites, four eras, four different ways of reading the same land. To these you can add Apulian Romanesque: not yet inscribed, but a recurring candidate, with cathedrals that have no equivalent anywhere else in Italy.
The museums of Puglia
Puglia has no shortage of museums. Among the most remarkable is the Jatta National Archaeological Museum in Ruvo di Puglia, which holds the finds unearthed by the archaeologist Giovanni Jatta in the early nineteenth century: one of the most important collections of Apulian pottery in Italy.
The other museum not to miss is the MArTA in Taranto, the National Archaeological Museum. Founded in 1887, it holds the archaeological record of the city and of the whole of Puglia, with an exceptional section on Magna Graecia, the Greek colonies of southern Italy: its collection of Greek goldwork is counted among the richest in the world.
The traditions of Puglia: deep roots
Puglia is not only clear sea and golden beaches: it is also a treasure of traditions rooted in a history thousands of years long. Religious rites, popular feasts, irresistible dances and craft trades add up to a kaleidoscope of things to see and to live.
The carnival of Putignano, one of the oldest in Italy
Think of carnival in Puglia and you think of Putignano, near Bari, where the festival takes on a dimension of its own. Its allegorical floats, among the most beautiful and imposing in Italy, parade through the streets in an explosion of colour, music and satire.
The real heart of the carnival of Putignano is the mask of Farinella: a jester dressed in white, his face covered by a black mask, with a cone-shaped hat. His clumsy, mocking dance stands for the common people and their revenge on the powerful.
The carnival of Putignano is one of the oldest in Italy: the first records of it go back to 1394. More than six hundred years of carnival, a heritage with no equal among Italian carnivals.
The pizzica: when the body becomes music
To the beat of tambourines and violins, the pizzica of the Salento sweeps everyone up in a whirl of energy and passion. It was born as a healing dance against the bite of the tarantula, the ritual known as tarantism, and today it is the best-known symbol of Salento culture around the world. The rite has not died out: in Galatina it still returns every 29 June, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
The spinning, sensual movements tell of love, pain and joy. Anyone who has been to a real pizzica evening in a Salento village in summer does not forget it easily: something ancient and irrational that bypasses the head and goes straight to the gut.
The Notte della Taranta in Melpignano is the great pizzica festival: every August it draws tens of thousands of people from all over the world. What was once a healing rite has become a global cultural phenomenon, without losing its deep roots in the land of the Salento.
Griko: where Greek is still spoken
Inland in the Salento, south of Lecce, there is a linguistic reality with no equal in Europe: the Grecìa Salentina, a group of nine towns (Calimera, Martignano, Sternatia, Zollino, Corigliano d’Otranto, Soleto, Martano, Castrignano dei Greci and Melpignano) where people still speak griko.
It is not modern Greek. It is a language of Greek origin, which some trace back to the colonists of Magna Graecia and others to the Byzantine era, alive in the Salento countryside for centuries while everything around it changed: languages, rulers, borders. Today it is endangered, but communities keep it alive through oral tradition, music and folk literature. A linguistic one-off in Europe that is worth the journey on its own.
And then there is everyday dialect. Alongside griko, which is a language in its own right, the speech of Puglia changes from one end of the region to the other, from the province of Foggia to those of Bari and Taranto: words, sayings and proverbs are gathered in our guide to the dialects of Puglia. There is even a chapter all of its own, the ‘ngiurie: the nicknames that towns give one another, and that inside a single town are passed down from family to family.
Lecce papier-mâché and the ceramics of Puglia
Lecce Baroque is not only about architecture. Lecce papier-mâché (cartapesta) is a centuries-old art that has produced statues, nativity scenes and sacred sculpture of extraordinary finesse, with a technique that takes years of apprenticeship to learn. The historic workshops in the centre of Lecce are still at work, producing pieces for churches, museums and collectors all over the world.
In Grottaglie, near Taranto, ceramics are another old story: the ceramics quarter, with its workshops cut into the tufa rock, is one of the most characteristic pottery centres in southern Italy. From the dinner plate to the pumo, the good-luck charm of Puglia, every piece bears the mark of the craftsman’s hand.
Beyond the carnival and the pizzica: a living heritage
The traditions of Puglia do not stop there. The region has a cultural heritage that lives on in forms still in use today:
- Patron saint and religious feasts — every town celebrates its patron saint with solemn processions, luminarie (the arches of lights that dress the streets), village fairs and fireworks. Genuine occasions, not staged for tourists.
- Craft trades — ceramics, Lecce papier-mâché, lace and embroidery, terracotta: every town has its speciality, handed down in local workshops.
- Apulian Romanesque — an extraordinary architectural heritage stretching from Bari to Trani, from Bitonto to Barletta: cathedrals built between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, right on the sea or up on the Murge plateau.
- Food and wine — from the simple flavours of peasant cooking to the dishes of the seafaring tradition, the Apulian table is itself a culture handed down.
- The Grecìa Salentina, between griko, pizzica and tarantate — a route through the oldest Puglia, the one that still speaks a language of Greek origin.
