Puglia travel & food magazine
Music, dialect, crafts and the feasts that still fill the streets.
Ennius, the poet the Romans called the father of their literature, was born in 239 BC at Rudiae, on the edge of Lecce. The Annales, his three hearts of Greek, Oscan and Latin, a short poem about food, and the amphitheatre you can visit today.
Between 1 and 2 November, in many Apulian towns, the table was left laid for the souls, boiled wheat was made and children found their stockings full. The story, town by town.
For centuries in the Salento, olive oil was made underground, in the trappeti: the mill hands, the nachiro, lamp oil. And where you can still go down today.
The vummile is the two-handled terracotta jug of the Apulian countryside, once used for water, wine and oil. What it is, where it is made and its new life in design.
Legend says Bianca Lancia, Frederick II’s last wife, still haunts the castle of Monte Sant’Angelo on the Gargano. The story, the emperor, and Gioia del Colle’s twin tale.
In October the biggest olives never went to the mill: they were split with one sharp tap, soaked for a week in water changed every day, then dressed with garlic, wild fennel and chilli. How cracked olives were made at home in Puglia.
From 18 to 27 September 2026 Barletta re-enacts the Disfida of 1503: thirteen Italian knights against thirteen French. What is actually documented, and how to see this year’s re-enactment.
At the end of the summer the Italian series Costanza brought back the name of Selvaggia of Staufen, Frederick II’s daughter. It was filmed between Verona and Vicenza, but the story begins in Puglia: Castelpagano, Castel del Monte, Lucera, Oria, Trani. The real places, and a three-day route.
At the end of August, in Puglia, the ones who came home go back. How that car was packed, what went into it and why – and a date that should not be forgotten: on 8 August 1956, 22 miners from Puglia died at Marcinelle.
After the 29th Notte della Taranta, the same argument returned: few local people on the staff, decisions taken elsewhere, the square emptying halfway through. The diagnosis is right, the culprit everyone names is wrong. The Salento has been selling what it has cheaply for five hundred years.
