Puglia's Prime
Culture, cooking, miles of coastline. . . No wonder this is Italy's newest 'next' place.

By Robert V. Camuto
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, May 22, 2005

It was lunchtime in Lecce -- a period that actually stretches over four hours and shutters nearly every store, bank and church across the long heel of Italy's boot, until activity resumes at about 5.

We lingered inside the Syrbar, a cafe that looks onto the grand Piazza del Duomo, formed by the ornate baroque white stone cathedral, a 17th-century palazzo and a soaring campanile. The square, which our Michelin guide referred to as "one of the most remarkable in southern Italy," was deserted.

The busloads of cell phone-toting Italian schoolchildren from morning were gone, and the piazza was bathed in sharp light. A black-robed priest scurried through the seminary gate to his old Fiat -- no doubt on his way to a plate of pasta alla Pugliese .

In the still core of this city of about 100,000 people 220 miles southeast of Naples, it was hard not to notice what was missing from this picture: There were no restaurants with outdoor tables, trendy boutiques or even a single souvenir shop. Instead, there was a potter's studio, a papier-mache workshop specializing in Lecce's famed creche figurines and the Syrbar.

I turned to Nino, the silver-haired proprietor behind the bar, and asked him in Italian, "Why no souvenir stands?"

Nino pulled the unlit stub of a cigar from his mouth and responded in Italian, "Lecce doesn't have that many tourists yet. In five years, when there are more tourists, we'll have souvenir stands."

On a recent tour of Italy's Puglia region with my wife and 11-year-old son, we sensed that inevitability almost everywhere. In some places, tourists have already arrived; in others they were expected. We felt it the minute we arrived in Bari's new, sleek, high-tech airport terminal, opened March 31; sensed it in the buzz of renovation and masonry work; saw it in the freshly minted signs advertising "Bed and Breakfast" -- in English.

Don't Call It Tuscany

Glossy travel magazines have already labeled Puglia (pronounced POOL-ya) "the next Tuscany" -- a ridiculous tag that makes people in both places laugh or cringe.

"The main difference" between the two regions, explained Alberto Giordano, who left his retirement project of a restaurant in Tuscany to join an architectural firm doing big things in his parents' birthplace in Matera (see story below), "is the people."

"Tuscany people are convinced they are the center of the world. Here, people are more humble. They were always poor, but proud of what they had."

Tuscany, of course, is the Renaissance -- high culture, language and art that spread from Florence to those country manors now occupied by Lord and Lady Somebody-or-other.

Puglia (population 4 million), deep in the Italian peasant south of Mezzogiorno, is one of the quirkiest regions of Italy, where it seems around every bend is another town with its own look, recipes, dialect and superstitions. There is no Puglia style from which to create a line of housewares, and that's the place's gritty charm. Jutting as vulnerably as it does into the Adriatic and Ionian seas, the 7,500-square-mile region has been prized for thousands of years by invaders and occupiers who contributed to the local stew: Greeks, Romans, Normans, Germans, Byzantines, Turks, Spaniards, French and nowadays the Italian holiday-makers who crowd its beaches in August.

Puglia can resemble Greece in its whitewashed hill towns, such as Ostuni in the central Murge hills, or Vieste, built into the rugged limestone cliffs above the Adriatic on the Promontorio del Gargano. Or Spain, in the southern baroque style of Lecce. Or the Near East, in the curlicued details of its Romanesque-era cathedrals, almost everywhere. Or it can resemble a world unto itself in the beehive-shaped dwellings of Alberobello.

So what does one do in Puglia? We spent a full seven days in the offseason, and I kept wishing for more time. In the end, we found ourselves too pressed to visit its most famous tourist attraction: Bari's Basilica di San Nicola, which holds the remains of the real Saint Nick, stolen by local sailors from his home in Turkey more than 800 years ago.

We drove -- a lot -- often in the wrong direction and generally through seas upon seas of olive trees and vines, all the way to the sun-drenched ports on the southern tip of the Salento peninsula. Puglia is way too vast to explore from one base. Our week-long itinerary took us hundreds of miles, beginning in the Promontorio del Gargano in the north and ending in Lecce and the Salento peninsula.

We walked -- a lot. We visited more ancient castles, churches and odd shrines than I can count -- among them the Basilica in Monte Sant'Angelo, built around the cave where the archangel Michael was said to have led a local bishop more than 1,500 years ago.

And we ate -- a lot. With so much of the day dedicated to the table, what else could we do? We found bargains everywhere, even with the dollar as limp as over-boiled tagliatelle .

On one of our last mornings in Puglia, our son summarized the trip this way: "We ate too much, we looked at too many buildings, and we always got lost."

Trulli Different

The center of Puglia's fashionable tourism is in the Valle D'Itria, the land of trulli .

Trulli are centuries-old stone and masonry cottages built from cylindrical room-size chambers -- each enclosed by conical stone roofs. Alberobello is the trulli capital, a village of more than a thousand still inhabited trulli, laid out side by side and topped with geometric pinnacles.

Walking through a neighborhood of whitewashed trulli with beaded doorway curtains and satellite dishes, many of the roofs painted with ancient Christian or astrological symbols, the effect is otherworldly. Is it Dr. Seuss, or some corner of ancient Byzantium? The magic is broken only when you hit one of Alberobello's main tourist streets, where the trulli are filled with souvenir shops hawking olive oil and liqueurs in trullo-shaped bottles.

Just as I was wondering where the trulli came from, I found a rather studious book titled "The TRULLI -- Where did they come from?" It explains that the dwellings proliferated around the 15th century in a complex tax scam. Local counts -- then under an Aragonese king -- allowed farmers and shepherds to build houses on feudal lands without mortar. By allowing dry "temporary" dwellings, the counts were able to avoid the king's taxes on urban areas while pocketing what they collected from the local peasantry.

Outside Alberobello, on the roads to Locorotondo and Cisternino, the countryside is loaded with storybook images: small walled farms with old trulli homes and perfectly disintegrating trulli ruins. Alongside them are trulli hotels, trulli restaurants and big neo-trulli vacation homes.

Dinner Theater

We stayed several days in nearby Martina Franca, a lively town with smart shops built around an old Ducal Palace and cathedral. Our hotel was a surprisingly modern place -- lots of black surfaces and glass -- wedged between a church and a park. At the desk was a friendly hostess, with long black hair and a black suit to match the interior, and I asked her about restaurant reservations, rattling off some of the names I'd found on English-language foodie Web sites.

She scrunched up her face, then rubbed her thumb against her fingers to say "caro" (expensive). She then suggested a couple of local places where we could eat well and not pay much.

We followed some of her recommendations, and were glad we did.

That night we went to Il Sagittario, a large place lit up like an airport and hopping at Puglia's dinner hour -- after 9 p.m. The appeal was not the food -- although they served us a generous mix of antipasti and pasta -- but the theater. At tables of big Italian families, children my son's age drank red wine, young men gathered in front of a big-screen television for the Juventus-Liverpool soccer match, and the nonsensical English-language menu translations included such gems as "Tear her" and "Points to the juice." The bill for all three of us, with a good bottle of Puglian wine, came to about $45.

At lunch the following day, we ignored reason and dropped about $140 at one of those places revered by gourmands. Il Poeta Contadino (The Peasant Poet) in Alberobello is set in an ancient vaulted stable, a bit overdressed with coral pink table linens, silver knife rests, a soft background and one tuxedoed waiter.

What arrived on our plates -- some of it delivered by chef Marco Leonardo -- was exquisite, starting with an array of appetizer purees made from such ingredients as fava beans and eggplant. His orecchiette alla Pugliese, earlobe-shaped pasta made with turnip greens and cherry tomatoes in this version, was so light it seemed to have a quarter of the heft of the pasta from the night before.

But there was something strange about the place. For one thing, we were the only people there. It was low season, and not many locals spend that much on lunch. On the walls were several years' worth of Wine Spectator awards for "one of the best wine lists in the world." So I figured it was a good idea to ask the waiter for a good producer from whom to buy wine.

Puglia rivals Sicily as Italy's largest wine region, albeit with a long-standing reputation for producing lots of thin, acidic wine by the tanker. In recent years, the reality has changed for the better. We found several rich, spicy, dry red wines at restaurants throughout Puglia at a fraction of the price of comparable Chianti Classico.

"There's a place not far from here, a father and son . . . " the waiter began in Italian, explaining that this local winery made some of the most delicious wine in Puglia. It was -- according to his taste, of course -- even better than the very nice and reasonably priced half-bottle of Puglian wine from Salice Salentino that we were now finishing.

Later that week I stopped by the winery, met father and son, and tasted the wine.

It was barely drinkable. But I bought some anyway -- at less than $3 a bottle, it was a cheap souvenir.

Confection of a Town

Lecce is the prettiest city in Puglia, but like most cities in this part of Italy, the old town is ringed by unfortunate architecture and depressing housing blocks. The historic center, with its great plazas and Roman amphitheater, became a theatrical set for exuberant stone artists who worked the soft white Lecce stone in the wealthy days of 16th- to 18th-century construction. Angels, demons, animals, fruits, flowers and figures adorn the grand churches and palaces. The city's most magnificent building, the Basilica Santa Croce, looks more like it was carved in confectioner's cream than rock.

Speaking of sweets, some of the most prized dolce in town come from the cloistered Benedictine nuns at the 12th-century convent of San Giovanni Evangelista. Buying some, however, is not easy. First you have to go to the convent and wait for one of the sisters to appear at the iron-grated window through which the public is greeted, and then be patient. The sisters move to a clock that's apparently not of this world, and we spent most of a morning placing an order, being told to return and waiting to buy a half-kilo of that day's specialty -- marzipan treats.

The food in Lecce is some of the best in Puglia. Just as we were crying out "Basta Pasta!" we found Cucina Casareccia, a restaurant in the loosest sense of the word.

It's two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor of a house just outside the old center. You ring the doorbell to enter the domain of Anna Carmela Perrone, who does the cooking and serving with two other women while her husband buses tables and tries to stay out of the way.

There is no menu. Perrone comes to your table, hands clasped in front of her, and more or less divines what you will eat. Her English is limited, so some Italian table vocabulary is a plus.

After our antipasti, which included battered and deep-fried olives, grilled eggplant and more, Perrone queried: "You would maybe like to start with a tart of potatoes and mussels, or perhaps orecchiette ? Do you eat horse? No? Then maybe you would like the lamb interior [liver, heart, lungs, etc.], or then why not the stuffed calamari," and so on.

We returned the next night for more in one of the few unanimous family decisions of the trip.

To the End of Italy

On our last excursion, we followed the highway down the Salento peninsula near the tip of the heel to Otranto, known for its cathedral and its detailed 11th-century mosaic floor recounting Christendom from Adam and Eve to King Arthur and featuring all sorts of fanciful twin-headed creatures. (On a more gruesome note, a chapel in the side of the cathedral displays the skulls and bones of several hundred local "martyrs" beheaded by invading Turks in 1480. The altar contains the actual chopping block. Depending on your child, this can be a point of interest.)

Given the eerie history, and what I'd read by one British travel writer who practically claimed to have discovered the place yesterday, I imagined Otranto as a forgotten, end-of-the-earth hamlet where the locals spoke some ancient version of Greek and worshiped tree gods, and the women veiled themselves in black. What we found was something quite different -- a well-manicured port town with restaurants, tourist shops and signs everywhere pointing to another outpost built by foreigners: Club Med.

Robert V. Camuto last wrote for Travel about Toulouse, France.

Details: Puglia, Italy

GETTING THERE: Fly to Rome or another European capital, then into the Bari or Brindisi airport on a European budget airline. Round- trip flights from Dulles to Rome start at $1,096, with one stop. Alitalia flies from Rome to Bari for $457 round trip. Britain's low-cost Ryanair ( http://www.ryanair.com/ ) has round-trip fares starting at about $85 from London's Stansted Airport.

GETTING AROUND: A car is necessary to explore Puglia. Check rates of international companies and reserve in advance.

WHEN TO GO: Best times are May, June and September. Avoid August, when Italians flock to the area's beaches.

WHERE TO STAY: Prices below include one night's stay in a double room with breakfast. To explore the Murge hills, including the Val d'Itria and the trulli, stay in the central area between Bari, the provincial capital, and Brindisi. The Masseria San Domenico (Savelletri di Fasano, 011-39-0804-827769, http://www.masseriasandomenico.com/ ) is built from an ancient watchtower on a 140-acre farm with a pool that resembles a natural lake, a spa, golf and tennis. From about $335.

Martina Franca is a good base for excursions, and the Villa Ducale (Piazzetta Sant'Antonio, 011-39-0804-805055; about $105) is a serviceable modern hotel. In Alberobello, Trullidea (Via Monte Nero, 011-39-0804-323860, http://www.trullidea.it/ ) rents renovated trulli as bed-and-breakfast studios with kitchens, starting at about $120.

In Lecce's historic center is the five-star Patria Palace Hotel (Piazzetta Riccardi, 011-39-0832-245111, http://www.patriapalacelecce.com/ ; about $280). A five-minute walk outside the center is the Hotel delle Palme (Via Dileuca, 90, 011-39-0832- 347171, http://www.paginegialle.it/dellepalme-03 ), offering nice big rooms for about $135.

On the Promontorio Del Gargano in Vieste, the small and friendly Hotel Svevo (Via Fratelli Bandiera, 011-39-0884-708830, http://www.viesteonline.it/hotelsvevo ) offers a good location between the sea and the town, and good value at about $100 to $120.

For an overnight stay in Matera's sassi cave areas, consider the four-star Hotel Sant'Angelo (011-39-0835-314010, http://www.hotelsantangelosassi.it/ ), about $155.

WHERE TO EAT: Eating well is not difficult in Puglia. For outstanding home-cooking in Lecce, don't miss Cucina Casareccia (Via Costadura 19, 011-39-0832-245178); dinner runs about $50 for two, plus wine. In Vieste, try the down-home Taverna Al Cantinone (Via Mafrolla 26, 011-39- 0884-707753), also about $50 for two.

In the Murge hills, those inclined may want to splurge (about $110 for two, plus wine) in Alberobello at Il Poeta Contadino (Via Indipendenza 21, 011-39-0804-321917), or while away an afternoon or evening outside of Ostuni in rural paradise on the family farm, Il Frantoio (SS16 km 874, Ostuni, 011-39- 0831-330276, http://www.trecolline.it/ ), which is also a bed-and-breakfast. Meals are about $64 per person, including wine.

In Matera, at the Sanrocco brothers' Antica Trattoria Lucana, 1900 (Via Lucana 48, 011-39-0835-336117, http://www.trattorialucana.it/ ), visiting film stars rub shoulders with locals. Try the inventive pasta specialties. About $50 for two, plus wine.

GROTTE DI CASTELLANA: Families with children will want to tour the Grotte di Castellana ( http://www.grottedicastellana.it/ ), the immense natural underground caves in the hills outside of Bari. Admission is about $10.50 or $17, depending on whether you take the 45- or 90-minute tour.

INFORMATION: Puglia Turismo , http://www.pugliaturismo.com/ . For information on Matera and the Basilicata region: Matera Turismo , http://www.materaturismo.it/english .

-- Robert V. Camuto