Puglia, the beach-fringed heel of Italy’s boot, offers lazy sun-drenched days and long limoncello lunches, leading ineffably to an afternoon nap. Holidays here are punctuated by flavoursome fresh food and ancient olive trees, architecture left by waves of invaders, and boat trips along the coast.
This is a place to wander through pine forests on the way to the beach, take a passeggiata around golden-stone piazzas, discover lime-white hilltop towns, or visit a fortified cathedral. Its sights are reminders of its richer past, when lamps were fuelled by olive oil and pirates roamed the coast.
All our recommendations below have been hand selected and tested by our resident destination expert to help you discover the best things to do in Puglia. Find out more below, or for more Puglia inspiration, see our guides to the region’s best hotels, restaurants, bars and beaches.
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Best for families
Alberobello
Wander a storybook town of trulli
The best-known site in Puglia is this Unesco-listed, hobbit-like town. Puglia has distinctive cone-roofed trulli dotting its countryside – whitewashed limestone houses with witches-hat drystone roofs. Rolling off the tongue, and meaning “beautiful tree”, Alberobello is the only place there is an entire town of these. It’s the most popular tourist spot in the entire region, with coachloads of visitors stopping by on whirlwind tours of Europe.
Insider tip: Touristy it might be, but Alberobello is still a fantastical place, especially if you get off the main drag and into the backstreets. Get here early in the morning or stay overnight to see the town at its most atmospheric.
Website: alberobellotourism.com
Price: Free
Castel del Monte
Discover Puglia’s perfect octagonal castle
This Unesco-listed mysterious 13th-century Castel del Monte, which stands 25m high, was built by Emperor Frederick II for unfathomable reasons in the middle of nowhere, and still mystifies after centuries of study. It has a geometrically perfect octagonal design, and is neither well enough fortified to serve as a defensive building, nor well enough equipped to be a pleasure palace.
Insider tip: An epic way to visit Castel del Monte is on horseback, crossing the Alta Murgia National Park: try Torre Sansanello for guided rides, which will take you across the beautiful surrounding countryside.
Website: museipuglia.cultura.gov.it
Price: £
Boat trips from Castro
See the Adriatic coast by boat
There are lots of boat trips on offer around Puglia’s long coast, either self-drive, with a captain or group tours. One of the best places from which to take a tour is Castro, on the Adriatic Salento coast. You’ll see the caves and rock formations along the coast, and reach as far as Santa Maria in Leuca before turning back.
Insider tip: It’s best to time your boat trip for earlier in the day so that the sun will illuminate the coastal sea caves, including Zinzulusa Cave, so-called as the stalactites look like hanging rags (zinzuli in the local dialect).
Website: inbarcanelsalento.it
Price: ££
Grotte di Castellana
Experience otherworldly karst caves
Around 10 miles (17km) inland from Monopoli are the Caves of Castellana, an underground system of karst caves over 3km long, full of needle-sharp stalagmites and stalactites. It’s a great place to visit in summer, as the temperature below ground stays constantly around 16.5C. Before the caves were discovered, the deep hole leading into them was known as “the Grave” – the bats and insects that emerged were believed to be spirits of the dead.
Insider tip: If you’re in the area when the cave system hosts the extraordinary spectacle, Hell in the Cave, featuring costumed performances, don’t miss it – these are a fantastic way to see the caves with some added drama.
Website: grottedicastellana.it
Price: £
Polignano a Mare
Stroll the lanes of this clifftop seaside town
The whitewashed houses of Polignano a Mare perch on limestone cliffs, creating one of the coast’s most dramatic tableaux. The town is hugely popular in summer for strolling and dining, the small historic centre packed with restaurants and souvenir shops. Yet away from the crowds, the town’s sleepy soul endures. Wander the backstreets and you’ll find elderly women sitting outside on plastic chairs, catching the evening breeze.
Insider tip: If the town’s beach is looking intensely busy, walk westwards along the coast and you’ll find some slightly less crammed swimming spots, including the small Lido Cala Paura where you can rent sunbeds, sunshades and pedaloes.
Website: polignanoamare.com
Price: Free
Gallipoli
Explore the walled island
On the Ionian coast, in Salento, Gallipoli’s name, “beautiful city” in Greek, indicates its Magna Grecia origins. Its castle-like, walled old city is on an island, joined to the mainland by a bridge. Inside the walls, you’ll catch glimpses of the town’s everyday life, card games and kids playing. During summer, the area around Gallipoli is famous for its outdoor nightclubs, such as Riobò.
Insider tip: Take a walk around the city ramparts for views over the old city, of fishing boats and out across the peacock-blue Ionian sea as the sun sets.
Website: visititaly.com
Price: Free
Gravina Underground
Explore the hilltown’s subterranean network
Gravina in Puglia, close to Altamura, is a small hill town with some remarkable sights. Its aqueduct was built in the 17th century, a dramatic crossing that Daniel Craig’s James Bond jumps off in A Time to Die. While underground, you can visit the network of catacombs, churches and houses that make up Gravina Sotterranea.
Insider tip: Visit the Casa Museo della Cola-Cola, which displays ceramics made by the same family for generations, including their signature rooster-shaped whistles.
Website: gravinasotterranea.it
Price: £
Best free things to do
Forest Umbra
Walk or cycle through the forest of shadows
This Unesco Biosphere Reserve on the Gargano Peninsula is 10,000 hectares of shady beech and oak woodlands, home to over 65 species of orchid. The area is criss-crossed by trails of varying challenge, for example, the easy three-mile trail that starts at the turtle-inhabited Umbra Lake.
Insider tip: Take water, and a map or screenshot your route as it’s often difficult to find a phone signal in the forest. Agriturismo Cantoniera D’Umbra, a farmstay in the forest, offers food and guided walks.
Website: visitvieste.com/la-foresta-umbra
Price: Free
Basílica de Santa Catarina de Alexandria
Visit a beautifully frescoed medieval church
In the inland Salento town of Galatina, this church dates from the 14th century. From the exterior it’s unfussy gothic, but step inside and the walls and ceilings glow with rich-coloured frescoes, like a southern outpost of the interiors at Assisi in Umbria, and painted by disciples of Giotto.
Insider tip: Galatina is the birthplace of Puglians’ favourite breakfast, the pasticciotto, an oval-shaped pastry filled with custard cream. Taste them at the historic 19th-century Pasticceria Andrea Ascalone, where it’s believed they were invented.
Website: basilicaorsiniana.it
Price: Free
Otranto
Explore this picturesque city that comes alive in summer
This fortified town on the Adriatic coast of Salento gets full of visitors during the summer, when there’s a carnivalesque feel to the nightly passeggiata through the narrow streets. There’s a spectacular cathedral mosaic, a waterfront promenade, and a history tied to Ottoman invasions. Great for both culture and a swim.
Insider tip: The small towns dotted inland from here, such as Corigliano and Carpignano, have sights ranging from castles to rock-cut churches, and a Greek influence in their history: some locals here still speak griko, a dialect with roots in ancient Greek.
Website: basilicaorsiniana.it
Price: Free
Locorotondo
Wander the cream-coloured streets of this beautiful hilltop town
This is another of Italy’s most beautiful villages. The name means “round place”. Walk to doily-white Largo Giuseppe Mazzini, admiring the town’s singular cummerse – steeply pitched roofs, with gutters at their bases to collect the rainwater – much less known than Puglia’s signature cone-shaped trulli, and take in the views from the outskirts. On a clear day, you can see Albania.
Insider tip: For enormous views across the fields and out to sea, walk Via Nardelli around the boundary of the centro storico, which locals call the Lungomare.
Website: italia.it
Price: Free
Lecce
Explore the Florence of the South
Lecce is Puglia’s grandest town, with a baroque architecture that is unique, a delirious approach to decoration that was born out of the soft, malleable local stone and some particularly intense cheese-dream imagination. This reaches its height in the facade of the Basilica di Santa Croce. Other architectural splendours include a Roman amphitheatre and the cathedral and its piazza.
Insider tip: Try local specialities in Lecce, including caffe Leccese (espresso with added almond milk, on ice) and a rustica, a bechamel and tomato-filled pastry.
Website: italia.it
Price: Free
Ostuni’s Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta
Discover the white city’s cathedral and steep white streets
Nicknamed La Città Bianca (The White City), this gleaming hilltop town in Puglia dazzles under the southern Italian sun. Its labyrinth of whitewashed alleyways winds through an atmospheric old town filled with baroque churches, craft boutiques and hidden courtyards, and all lanes lead to Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, a beautiful 15th-century building added to over the centuries.
Insider tip: Time your visit for evening passeggiata, when streets and cafés hum with chatter, and golden hour lights the white facades. For aperitivo with a view, head to Borgo Antico Bistrot near the duomo, and don’t miss the sunset.
Website: italia.it
Price: Free
Orecchiette Street, Bari Old City
See pasta made by hand on the street
Bari Vecchia, with its labyrinthine narrow streets, is reminiscent of an Arabian medina. The lanes buzz with life and the smell of Mediterranean cooking, and local women still make orecchiette pasta by hand in the streets. Watch their skills and pick up a bag before popping into the Basilica di San Nicola, a pilgrimage site devoted to St Nicholas (AKA Father Christmas).
Insider tip: If you have time, swing by Bari’s fish market on the Lungomare. Fishermen untangle the nets and empty their fresh produce out for sale, with shoals of local fish.
Website: italia.it
Price: Free
Best for local culture
A pilgrimage to Monte Sant’Angelo
See the grotto visited by St Michael
Drive the steep, zigzagging road above the Gargano peninsula and you’ll reach Monte Sant’Angelo. This Unesco-listed, mystical sanctuary is one of pilgrimage, with a karst cave containing a shrine to St Michael the Archangel. The bronze doors to the cave were made in 1076 in Constantinople and show panels depicting the saint’s life. Look for historic graffiti around the cave.
Insider tip: This area is associated with Padre Pio, whose bearded photo adorns many homes around the region, and was based nearby in the convent of San Giovanni Rotondo.
Website: santuariosanmichele.it
Price: Free
Trabucchi – Gargano’s fishing machines
See a vintage fishing contraption
Peculiar to the Gargano stretch of coast, trabucchi are wooden fishing machines, platforms jutting out over the iris-blue water, with levers, ropes and pulleys for suspending nets and then drawing in the catch. Historically, these were used as a safe way to fish from the coast without risking weather and pirates out at sea. You can arrange to see a functioning trabucco via the Non-profit Association for the Protection of the Gargano Historic Trabucco.
Insider tip: Several of the trabucchi have been turned into fish restaurants, and it’s a wonderful experience to eat fresh seafood on one of these wooden platforms jutting over the water. Try Al Trabbuco near Peschici.
Website: trabucchidelgargano.org
Price: Free
National Archaeological Museum of Taranto
Visit Taranto’s great archaeological museum
Taranto doesn’t receive so much tourist traffic, with the heavy industry of its steelworks giving an air of menace to its outskirts. However, it’s an unsung gem. Its dilapidated old city is like a mini-Napoli, with card games in back streets and mopeds whizzing down the narrow lanes. However, the main reason to come here is the wonderful National Archaeological Museum of Taranto, which doesn’t receive as many visitors as it deserves, yet is crammed full of treasure from the Magna Grecian era.
Insider tip: Taranto is especially well known for its shellfish, especially oysters and mussels. Stop here for lunch in the old city to try some of the fresh-from-the-sea crustaceans.
Website: museotaranto.org
Price: £
Grottaglie ceramics
Browse Puglia’s ceramics capital
Puglia has its own distinctive style of ceramics, with the classic blue design on a biscuit-brown background, sometimes adorned with a rooster. Other signatures are the acorn-shaped decorations that symbolise good luck. More than 50 workshops cluster in Grottaglie in Taranto province, which for over 400 years has been a centre of ornamental ceramics, passed down over generations.
Insider tip: One of the families who have been producing ceramics for generations is the Fasano family, with Enza Fasano’s ceramic workshop giving Puglian tradition a contemporary twist.
Website: italia.it
Price: £-£££
Trani Cathedral
Wonder at this waterfront duomo
The elegant, affluent-feeling town of Trani clusters around its marina, with the Norman Basílica de San Nicolás Peregrino perhaps the world’s most dramatically situated cathedral, right on the water’s edge, built of the palest pink local stone in the 12th century, with a beautiful Romanesque bell tower. Inside is a forest of columns.
Insider tip: Trani’s historic Jewish quarter once had four synagogues, later turned into churches; one, Santa Maria in Scolanova, has been restored as a synagogue.
Website: italia.it
Price: Free
Fornello Pronto dining, Cisternino
Eat barbecued meat at traditional butcher shops
With white-washed and limestone buildings on top of its hill, Cisternino is designated one of Italy’s most beautiful villages. You could be in Greece or Italy, wandering its narrow flower-blazing backstreets. This is a good place to try fornelli pronti, butchers-turned-restaurants. Recommended is the local favourite, Al Vecchio Fornello. Try a bombetta, a roll of pork, usually filled with pancetta and cheese.
Insider tip: Cisternino is a good place to go wine tasting: the city centre is packed by small wine bars where you can sample local wines, such as the bottle-lined Vineria del Borgo.
Contact: Al Vecchio Fornello; 0039 080 444 1113
Price: £
How we choose
Every attraction and activity in this curated list has been tried and tested by our destination expert, to provide you with their insider perspective. We cover a range of budgets and styles, from world-class museums to family-friendly theme parks – to best suit every type of traveller. We update this list regularly to keep up with the latest openings and provide up to date recommendations.
About our expert
Abigail Blasi, Telegraph Travel’s Puglia expert, fell for the region – and her Puglian husband – over 20 years ago. She loves its spring flowers, summer sagre, burrata, and discovering hidden corners of Italy’s heel.