Puglia travel & food magazine
Towns, coasts and the corners of Puglia worth the drive.
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.
The Cammino del Salento runs from Lecce to Santa Maria di Leuca, the southern tip of Italy’s heel. Two branches, and only one open: the sea route, 115 km along the Adriatic. The inland route is closed for 2026 — and plenty of guides still recommend it.
The cycling season in Puglia is not summer but September and October: the difficulty here is not gradient, which barely exists, but heat. Which cycling tracks actually exist as against the ones still on paper, how hard each area is, and the thing almost nobody knows — across Italy bikes cost extra on regional trains, but not here.
Everyone knows the postcard Gargano — Vieste, Peschici, the Tremiti. But the national park covers more than 120,000 hectares. Five hidden places: a medieval village, the paths off the map in the Foresta Umbra, the Daunian stelae, the hermits of Pulsano and the coast you can only reach by boat.
Bari at 2,070 euros a square metre, Taranto at 931, Lecce climbing 7.8% while the region moves 0.8%. And on the other side, the Apulian towns selling houses for one euro.
White stone against blue, with nothing between the church and the sea.
A collapsed sea cave forming a natural pool — swimming banned since 2019 — with over 3,000 ancient inscriptions on its walls.
The sea is at its warmest in September, prices fall by about 30%, and the towns go back to their own life.
Nardò, Melendugno, Otranto, Gallipoli and Vieste hold Legambiente’s Cinque Vele.
Three kilometres underground, 70 metres deep, ending at the White Cave.
