Going along the national road that climbs the Murge will give you a breathtaking view, and reaching Alberobello, the capital of the “trullo” on the outskirts of Bari, will be a unique experience. It was founded in the 15th century by the Acquaviva, Counts of Conversano, thanks to the colonization of the Sylva arboris belli, “the war tree forest”, whose testimonies are still scattered on the region. Today the old city has been recognized as a unique architectural phenomenon and UNESCO has included it in the World Heritage List.
The trulli are located on two hills separated by a Karstic channel: on the highest hill stands the Monti district and on the lower hill stands the Aia Piccola district.
There are more than 1000 trulli and going along the narrow paved roads is almost magic: rare specimens of Fragno grows taller against the dry-stone walls on the slopes; along the streets the lime-white walls contrast the grey conical roofs of the trulli decorated with mysterious symbols and characterized by different pinnacles.
Following one of the seven streets of the Monti district will lead you to the top of the hill dominated by St. Antonio Church, a church in the shape of trullo.
If you reach one of the terraces of the Aia Piccola district by night, you will feel like living in a fairytale: you will see a charming landscape where thousands of lights peep out of the trulli, scattering among narrow streets and steps.
If during winter you are so lucky to see Alberobello under a blanket of soft snow, you will feel like being in a postcard to keep in your memory.
And then, workshops, shops, cafés, restaurants…where you can buy a souvenir for your loved ones, you can spend a nice evening or you can have dinner in a good restaurant.

Legend says that the city, on the outskirts of Foggia, was built around the cave where St. Michael the Archangel  appeared several times (490, 492, 493 A.D.) .
Today Monte Sant’Angelo is a lovely town standing on a spur, from where you can admire the stunning scenery of the Gulf of Manfredonia. It is an agricultural and tourist village near the sea and the Umbra Forest, an heir of mansions, that is the first houses built around the caves where pilgrims took shelter. During the years the village stretched on the slopes of the hill with its characteristic maze of stepped streets.
The sanctuary of St. Michael the Archangel, with its octagonal bell tower, is situated in the city centre and is one of the most ancient religious place of Christianity.
From the sanctuary you can go to the Basilica and to the cave where you will find the marble statue of the Archangel made by Andrea Sansovino
Not far from the sanctuary there are the Castle, the Baptistery of Giovanni in Tumba, best known as the Rotari Grave, and the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore where you can admire three important  Byzantine frescos, one of which is consecrated to St. Francesco who, according to the tradition, visited the church in 1216.
Inside the fourteenth-century ex Franciscan monastery, moreover, there is the Art and Popular Tradition Museum of the Gargano “Giovanni Tancredi”.

Located in the Itria Valley, in the province of Brindisi, it is known as the White Town.
It is a pure pearl set on three hills on the outskirts of Murge, which dominates the plain of age-old olive trees stretching from Brindisi to Monopoli.
Here you can walk along an interlacement of little squares, narrow streets, steps and alleys, among arches and buttresses surrounded by white houses, and you can admire a stunning scenery characterized  by plays of lights and shadows and by the different colours of doors and shutters  used in the past to distinguish the inhabitants of Ostuni (grey and red) from the immigrants (blue, brown and green).
The shining whiteness is  contrasted by the imposing ochre of the late Gothic Cathedral  built in 1400 and of the eighteenth-century Monastery of the Carmelites, where you can admire the most ancient mother of the world Delia kept in the Museum of the preclassic civilization.

“Tortuous stepped and uphill streets, thick walls and impregnable doors. A city built for fear that the Turkish could come back and cut heads off”, wrote Roberto Cotroneo in his novel, Otranto.
The wonderful medieval village of this ancient town on the outskirts of Lecce, in the Salento, is surrounded by the defensive walls built by the Aragoneses to defend the village after the Turkish invasion.
Its importance was historically bound to the role of road junction with the near city of Brindisi and to the role of trade point with the East. Its prestige lasted also after the Roman Conquest (in 266 B.C) and after the Byzantine and Norman Conquest.
The 28th  July 1480 was a tragic date: 18.000 Turkish men put ashore and besieged the city capturing it on the 12th August. This was an ambitious plan of Maometto II, who expected  the conquest of Italy and its rejoining to Muslim Spain.
In September 1481 the city was set free by Alfonso d’Aragona, the Duke of Calabria.
The main entry to the medieval village is the Alfonsina Door surrounded by two cylindrical towers.
Although the 15th -16th century changes, the Cathedral is still one of the most important example of Romanesque art in Puglia. Above all it is famous for its mosaic flooring.
And then there is the imposing Castle, built between the 1485 and the 1498, behind which the first part of Messapic walls of the 4th century was found.
In memory of the historic event of the 1480, the Church of Santa Maria dei Martiri was built on the Minerva hill, where the last 800 inhabitants, who refuses to convert themselves to Islam, were massacred by the Turkish. You can reach it by climbing the stairs you find on the right hand side of the Castle.

If you want to be dumbfounded looking one of the most striking landscapes of Puglia, you have to visit this city on the outskirts of Bari.
Polignano seems to be a rock rising out of water during a low tide day.
The town overlooks the edge of a 24 meter high cliff; overhanging houses are linked by a network of whitewash alleys and narrow streets that will take you to wonderful openings on the cliff: real terraces with a panoramic view where you can got lost in the blue horizon of sky and sea.
But other surprises await you: on the cliff you will find houses and under it… marine caves!
Under your feet there are hidden caves hollowed out by the wave-motion of the sea, which has shaped the coastal calcareous rock during the years.
The most spectacular is Palazzese Cave, above which you can find a restaurant and a hotel. The water which laps on this cave has a wonderful and enchanting green-blue colour due to the depth and the sunbeams.
It is said that Queen Giovanna D’Angiò I (1326-1382) was so enchanted by the beauty of this cave that decided to seduce her pageboy  and to spend some time alone with him.
But there are many others caves, such as the Stalactitic Cave and the Sea Lion Cave, which can be visited only on board of boats that follow the coast of the caves.
Not far from the old village, near the Marchesale Arch, which has been the only entry to the city since 1700, you can go down the fascinating Lama Monachile (“lame” are deep riverbeds which give rise to caves and inlets), which is crossed by a Roman bridge over the Trajan way and by a second bridge built around 1810 by Gioacchino Murat, when he was the King of Naples.
You can reach then an old small harbour situated in a wonderful inlet called Cala Paura.

The Trullis are buildings found all over the region originally used as storehouses for agricultural and pastoral activities; with time, and only on the Murgian plateaus, they were changed to permanent dwellings, forming proper villages of “casedde”, as they are called in the local dialect.
The word “trullo” expresses the concept of roundness, circularity; in fact the trulli’s roof is circular, just as the conception of farming time paced by the cycle of working seasons is circular.
Such concept of cyclical space is well expressed by the Greco-Byzantine word “trullos”, meaning “dome”; Christianity attributed to the Latin term “trullus” the meaning of domed chapel (in Rome there was the Piazza del Trullo, nowadays Piazza del Popolo).
The Italian “trullo” comes from the dialectical term ‘truddo’ used in Salento. The trulli are the typical example of “dry-stone architecture”, that is, of that architecture which does make use of mortar.

There is something magical in the trulli.
The circular shape for example: destined to be a dwelling, it has since ever responded to a religious principle; it delimits a magic-sacral space, in whose interior the forces of evil cannot penetrate.
In sacred iconography, in fact, the circle represents the sky while the square represents the earth: the trullo encloses both.
Then the pinnacles: with a clear decorative-symbolic function, they have an origin to be looked for, some scholars, in the Betilic cult, professed by ancient Eastern people.
Difficult to give an explanation to the limestone signs drawn on the conical roofs: directed towards the sky they appear to be facing a divinity.
According to some they are symbols which could derive from prehistoric era; according to others they derive from ancient Druid rituals celebrated in the forests of the location.