Published in The Daily Telegraph, April 2007
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So well heeled

Once a neglected corner of the peninsula, Puglia is creating a buzz with its fine coastline and unique architecture. Report by William Ham Bevan

PUGLIA is a region on the up. The southeastern tip of Italy – the heel of the boot – has found itself promoted from a backwater to one of the Mediterranean’s most hyped destinations of recent years. Tellingly, nobody refers to its Anglicised name of Apulia any more. It’s rather as if travel trendsetters suddenly decided to dispense with "Tuscany" in favour of the more authentically Italian "Toscana".

After touching down at Brindisi Airport, we first opted to head for lunch at Lecce, famed for its baroque architecture. We weren’t to know that the Leccesi are sticklers for the old southern Italian custom of shutting everything down for a nap in the early afternoon.

As we wandered the silent streets in search of a bite, the mannequins that stared out from the smart boutiques heavily outnumbered real people. It seemed a pity to experience Lecce like this, so we slunk away, to return in the evening.

The difference could hardly have been greater. Here was a real, honest-to-God Italian passaggiata in all its noisy bustle. The narrow streets of the old town were full to bursting with locals of all ages, on their customary evening promenade: groups of boys sporting biker jackets, aviator shades and immaculately milled stubble; teenage girls with the trademark Italian don’t-even-look pout, affecting to ignore them; families squabbling among themselves, and licking at icecreams the size of the Statue of Liberty’s torch. 

The architecture is indeed wonderful. Although this part of Italy has been overrun by everyone from the Romans, Byzantines and Normans to the Turks and Venetians, the particular style of the city owes more to a geological accident than to the stamp of any single culture.

Lecce stone is the secret: a type of limestone that is soft enough to be worked easily with a chisel. This famed material allowed the builders of 16th-century Lecce to give full rein to their Baroque fantasies, and now it’s difficult to gauge where architecture ends and decoration begins, so ornate is the masonry work.

The buildings for which Puglia is most famous, though, are less fussy. The trullo is a form of dwelling that is found nowhere other than the valley of Itria (geographically, just about where the heel of Italy is nailed to its sole). These are small, cylindrical buildings, fashioned from dry limestone and whitewashed, with beehive-like stone roofs that taper to a point.

It’s easy to know when you’ve reached the valley: twee little trulli are everywhere, and there’s even a petrol station in one. Where they first came from, though, is a matter of some debate. One theory is that since trulli can be built up and pulled down in a hurry, in past centuries their owners would demolish their own buildings whenever the taxman came to town to assess property duty, and then rebuild them when he had moved on.

When one trullo became too small, the owner would just slap up another one next door, and knock the walls through – repeating the process whenever more space was needed. It makes the larger clusters look like a scale model of St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow that has been executed by Fred Flintstone.

The town of Alberobello is the capital of trulli, and one of Puglia’s most visited places. Here, you can eat, drink, shop or stay in a trullo; and even pray in one, a the hilltop church of Saint Antonio is built in the region’s characteristic style.
 
We, however, were staying at Gallipoli – a popular base from which to reach the Salentine peninsula’s many beaches. The road links are surprisingly good in southern Puglia, meaning Gallipoli is well placed for days out on the other, Adriatic side of the peninsula, as well as on the western coastline around the town.

Hugging the coastal road on the western side, we passed innumerable small settlements such as Santa Maria al Bagno, with its serene natural harbour and striped villas, and the holiday town of Porto Cesareo. Between them were endless rows of apartments and gated resort complexes; inland was olive country, where Puglia’s most famous export is produced.

It wasn’t difficult to see why Italian families flock to these child-friendly beaches, but we preferred the more grown-up charms of the A driatic coast. After an enjoyable drive past fields of flowers and thickly wooded glades, we came to the pretty seaside town of Otranto, which has gained unlikely renown as the southern region’s clubbing capital.

Continuing south, we found somewhere yet more picturesque. Porto Badisco is a fun-sized finger of bay cut into the coast, with a tiny crescent of beach. If not for the two nearby restaurants, it would have made a perfect Famous Five smugglers’ cove, and the waters were crystal-clear. We later discovered that these seas are indeed among the cleanest in Europe.

Halfway to Leuca, the point of Italy’s heel that Julius Caesar branded “the end of the world”,we ended our A driatic exploration at the Grota Zinzulusa. Here, a series of catwalks lead you around the cliffs and into a seacave system that could easily serve as a Bond villain’s lair.

After weaving between stalagmites in a series of antechambers, we emerged into a deep grotto, where previous visitors had charcoaled their names. One piece of graffiti looked as though it had been scrawled just yesterday; but when my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw with astonishment the date that “Gino” had written alongside his name: 1906. Just over a hundred years ago.

And in truth, Puglia as a whole also feels like an older, more timeless Italy. Despite its recent rebranding, it remains rural, eccentric, often very beautiful, and best of all, entirely without pretension.