In short. Puglia is about four hours long from the spur to the heel, which is short enough to cross and far too long to do from one hotel. These are routes built around a single idea — a coast, a period, a landscape — rather than around ticking off towns.
The mistake most first visitors make is trying to see the whole region in a week from a single base. It does not work: you spend the holiday on the SS16. Pick a stretch, stay in it, and let the second visit have the rest.
Six routes, one per area
Each of the six areas of Puglia makes a coherent trip of three to five days on its own. They are described, with the towns in each, under where to go in Puglia.
- The Gargano — the spur: forest, cliffs, pilgrimage, and the islands offshore
- The Adriatic coast — the romanesque cathedrals, one after another, down to Bari
- The Murgia — the high stone plateau, the bread, and Castel del Monte
- The Valle d’Itria — the trulli, the white towns, and the shortest distances between them
- The Salento — the baroque, two seas, and the Greek-speaking villages
- The Ionian coast — the ravines, the ceramics of Grottaglie, and Taranto
Routes built on a theme instead
If you would rather follow one thread across the region than stay in one part of it, three work well:
Frederick II — the Swabian emperor left castles the length of Puglia, and the strangest of them, Castel del Monte, is the one to build the route around.
What is underground — the Castellana caves, the rock-cut churches of the ravines, and the sea caves of the Gargano. A limestone region seen from inside.
Food, town by town — each product has an address: bread at Altamura, capocollo at Martina Franca, burrata at Andria, ceramics at Grottaglie. The whole map is under Apulian food and produce.
Practical, before you build any of them
You will need a car. The railway serves the coast and the large towns, and almost nothing you will want to see is on it. Distances look small on the map and take longer than they should, because the roads go through the towns rather than around them. Getting to Puglia covers the ways in, airport by airport.
For choosing what to build the days around, see what to see in Puglia; for where to sleep along the way, where to stay.
The one itinerary that does not need a car
There is an exception to the paragraph above, and it is worth knowing about. On a bicycle the region works differently: Puglia is flat almost everywhere, bikes travel free on the regional trains, and two of the Alta Murgia routes start from a railway station. Our cycling section covers the routes that actually exist, area by area, with distances and climbing measured rather than guessed.
