Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
much of your time; the restaurants on the waterfront just off the old town tend
to prey on the captive tourists waiting for ferries to Greece. If you are there at
mealtime, go instead toward the Piazza Mercantile for better food at slightly bet-
ter prices—the
Mercantile
(Piazza Mercantile, 15;
%
080-5210124)
does a nice
orchiette
with tomato and pecorino cheese for
€
5.
LE MURGE
Just north of Bari, a 150-by-50km (93-by-31-mile) limestone plateau called Le
Murge reaches inland from the sea. The terrain here is marked by caves and
ravines and dotted with little villages. An intriguing spot is the caves at
Castellana
Grotte
55
9
(
%
081-4998211;
€
8 short tour,
€
15 for longer tour; Oct-Mar
8:30am-12:30pm, year-round 2:30-6:30pm),
which are a visually stunning
labyrinth of stalactites and stalagmites twisting from the cavern floors and ceil-
ings. There are two options for seeing the caves, both through guided tours (of
which only one is an abbreviated English tour at varying times, but there isn't
enough narration to warrant planning your day around it, so just take the Italian
tour). The shorter, 1km (
2
⁄
3
-mile) tour lasts about an hour and is best if you've got
kids because you won't want to subject them to a longer distance than that. Far
more interesting, however, is the 3km (2-mile) tour that lasts around 2 hours and
includes the Caverna Bianca, which is a large opening in the deepest part of the
cave network that is lined with glassy, shimmering stalactites. These caves were
used primarily as a landfill for the area's trash until 1938, when they were explored
fully and now are one of the most educational stops in the province. Bring a long-
sleeve shirt—it's always 60°F (16°C) inside the caves.
THE ROAD TO
TRULLI
COUNTRY
The rural highways through the Itria Valley to Ostuni are lined with vineyards,
ancient olive trees, almond groves, and peach and cherry orchards, which makes
a leisurely drive through the back roads one of the great pleasures of exploring this
part of southern Puglia. This is also where you begin to see the conical houses
called
trulli,
which are whitewashed stone huts with stacked gray slate-tile roofs.
Many
trulli
rooftops are painted with astrological signs and almost all of them in
this area are inhabited.
Few people really seem to know why these structures exist, but the most cred-
ible local legend states that they were originally built as a way to avoid housing
taxes (because they had only stacked rocks and no mortar, they theoretically
weren't houses). There is, after all, an old Italian proverb,
“Fatta la legge, trovato
l'inganno”
(“As the law is made, the deception is found”), which still holds true
today. Another believable piece of
trulli
trivia is that when a baby was about to be
born, the man of the
trulli
would build another room with its own cone, so any-
one passing by could easily see how many children each family had, and thus how
fortunate they were.
The
capital of the
trulli
area
is the Disney-esque town of
Alberobello
55
,
which has 1,500 of these dwellings, now mostly housing trinket peddlers, wine bars,
and clothing shops. You should definitely stop here, but the best part of Alberobello
is across the Largo Martellotta, away from the tourist mecca into the residential zone
around the Piazza M. Pagano. These
trulli
are still primarily private houses, and a
quiet walk-through will give you a better idea of how the population lives. The
