EXCURSIONS

You can happily spend a relaxed week exploring Ostuni on foot, enjoying its strange mix of architectural styles and sampling the delights of its many cafés, bars and restaurants. There is also a cinema (outdoor in summer) showing the latest films but only dubbed into Italian.

Outside the town walls, a short walk from the main Piazza, there is an outdoor theatre which stages musicals and bands during the summer months. But if you hire a car (see our notes on local car hire firm) or are prepared to travel by train (the rail service is good and cheap) Puglia has many other wonderful treats to offer. Most of these are within easy reach of Ostuni by train or car – the main roads are good and fast and there is lots to explore. It takes about an hour to get to the magnificent town of Lecce, known as the Florence of the South and famous for its baroque architecture and elegant shops.

The ampitheatre at Lecce

Bari, about the same distance by train, has a splendid castle, and the beautiful Basilica di San Nicola, where the crypt contains the remains of St Nicholas (AKA Santa Claus), and a fascinating old town area, plus two parallel streets (full of Italian designer shops) that look like Oxford Street with palm trees.

Even more exciting is Matera, a 2 hour drive from Ostuni. Matera is in Basilicata and was the location for the filming of Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. It is famous for the sassi – cave dwellings including churches built into the solid rock which are now a World Heritage Site – and has recently become a very smart place to live, popular with Italian film people. If you are driving and are interested in archaeology it’s worth visiting the Greco-Roman sites at Metaponto and Policoro on the coast south of Matera. In both there are wonderful museums containing well-preserved relics.

You can visit some delightful coastal towns by public transport. Monopoli and Polignano are on the way by rail from Ostuni to Bari and both stations are a short walk from the port area where you will find some good seafood restaurants and interesting little streets in the old town areas. If you change at Bari and carry on for a few more stops you will reach the lovely seaside town of Trani with its magnificent cathedral on the sea and its lovely port with bars and restaurants, and the fascinating medieval streets of the old town. You might want to drive inland to visit the magnificent Norman fortress of Castel del Monte.

If you have a car and want to drive further south from Lecce, the Salentine Coast is very beautiful (though crowded in summer). You can visit the pretty town of Otranto, then drive on to Santa Maria di Leuca, the ‘land’s end’ of this part of Italy where two seas (the Adriatic and the Ionian) meet. It’s also worth driving northwards up the Western coast to see Galllipoli where you pass over a causeway into the lovely old town, a maze of whitewashed small streets by the sea. NB When exploring this area, do stick to the coastal roads travelling south from Ostuni. Inland the countryside is flat and uninteresting with rather a lot of cement factories, and it is all too easy to get lost in the back streets of one of the small inland towns.

Closer to Ostuni are some delightful small hill towns with beautiful old buildings in their centres – do not be put off by the ugly high-rise structures around their perimeters. If you persist you will find fantastic treasures beyond these cement monstrosities: park in the modern areas and walk to the centro storico where the streets are often very narrow and difficult to negotiate with a car. Perhaps most interesting is Alberobello, famous for its thousands of trulli – circular stone houses with cone-shaped roofs made of dry stones without cement. These fascinating buildings are dotted all over the countryside round Ostuni and look like hobbit houses. There is even a trullo church. Many of the trulli are now being converted into homes, particularly by English people who love living among the olive groves. The landscape, with its thousands of olive trees intermingled with huge prickly pear cacti and honey-coloured dry stone walls, is most unusual and more reminiscent of parts of Greece than Italy. Not far from Alberobello are the Grotte di Castellana, amazing underground caves and passages full of magical stalagmites and stalagtites. Don’t be put off by the touristy shops and long queues in summer months – the caves are spectacular and worth a wait.

Also worth a visit is Cisternino, with a delightful old centro storico, and Locorotondo, built in a circular formation, hence its name, where streets spiral up to a magnificent church which can be seen for miles around. In the modern area, the local cantina sociale, a vast wine factory, sells the very good local wine. Best is the white wine which costs about 8 euros for 5 litres. In July and August all these small towns have their own festivals, when thousands of people descend on them to see the decorated streets and sample the local food until the early hours of the morning. Martina Franca, another town not far from Ostuni, holds an international arts festival every year in late July/early August – for information go to www.euro-festival.net and look for the Festival della Valle d’Itria. They stage little known operas in historic buildings and you may find you have to go in person to the booking office to buy tickets – unless they change their usual booking system this year!

NB. If you don’t have a car and want to visit some of the little places like Alberobello, Cisternino and Locorotondo which are difficult/impossible to reach on public transport, call the taxi driver Angelo on 0039 330 964 927 (he speaks some English) and he will take you. It costs about 120E for a trip to these places (half day allowing time for lunch) which though quite expensive for one or two people can work out quite cheap for four.

ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE
Annamaria and Rosa, the two very friendly sisters who run the Internet Café in Ostuni called Gran Caffé Tito Schipa, have begun offering excursions to our guests. This year they are offering to drive guests to various local places at very competitive prices. The best idea is for you to go and visit them in the café (just off the main Piazza with a sign saying Internet Point) and make your own arrangements, but to give you an idea, they will give you an introductory tour of the region for. This would begin with a drive to the coast to see people collecting ricci, sea urchins, a local speciality, then on to the archeological ruins at Egnazia, followed by the trullo town of Alberbello with a stop to look round and to have coffee. Then on to Locorotondo to sample and maybe buy the local wine in the big cantina and finally to the livestock market at Cisternino, famous for its beef. The tour would last from about 11am till 3pm. They can also combine Alberobello with the magnificent caves at Castellano or with the zoo-safari park at Fasano – just tell them what you would like to see. If you wanted them to take you to the private sandy beach of Rosa Marina (where private cars are not allowed to park) they would drive you there for 15euros and then you could call them when you wanted to return and they would come and collect you for the same price.

Please see separate section for local beaches.