Other Must-See Spots
What's interesting about the Basilicata and Apulia regions is that many of the most interesting places to visit are beyond the borders of the major cities. From the coastline to the mountains, you can poke around in a rental car and make your own unforgettable memories.
Lecce Baroque
The 100,000-strong city of Lecce is about as far down the heel of Italy's boot as you can get. Lecce is nicknamed “the Florence of the South” because it is so replete with baroque buildings. The stonework is truly over-the-top, thanks to “Lecce stone” (a form of limestone found here), which is very malleable. In fact, when architecture students discuss the baroque style, they call the ostentatious form found here “Lecce baroque.”
Fact
The term “baroque,” in addition to describing a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century style of art and architecture, is used nowadays as a synonym for “Byzantine” — meaning anything thought to be excessively complex to the point that its meaning is lost. The word also can be used to describe an item decorated so ornately that it becomes tacky.
Perhaps the most significant example of ornate decoration in Lecce is Chiesa di Santa Croce, or Church of the Holy Cross. Its earliest portions date to the mid-1350s, though work on it was incomplete until 1695. The fa çade is a veritable mélange of carvings including animals, vegetables, and figurines. You could spend all day looking at the fa çade and still feel as though you'd gotten your money's worth at this site (which, being a church, is actually free to enter).
Vieste Beaches
Vieste is a town in the Apulia region that continually wins awards for the purity of its local waters. Stone grottos and arches dot the landscape within stretches of golden sand beaches, meaning that even though your beach chair might be propped up fairly close to another tourist's, you'll at least enjoy a terrific view in the distance. Some of the beachfront resorts are actually located within national parkland here, so you get surrounding trees in addition to waterfront access.
The town is home to fewer than 15,000 permanent residents, although it provides some of the best tourist access of all the seaside resorts in this part of Italy. Should your vacation here occur during the winter months, though, don't expect to find much open along the waterfront. Like beach towns all over the world, the locals lock up and go into warm cocoons until spring.
Grottaglie Ceramics
This tiny town outside of Taranto is known as the “city of ceramics.” The first documentation of ceramics being produced here is in the post-Medieval period. Since then, styles have changed from era to era, leaving Grottaglie ceramics without a trademark look or design. But the town is still known for its ceramics today — and has an entire quarter where artisans will let you into their workshops to watch while they create new pieces. If you're lucky, you might get an eyeball on a “master potter” from Grottaglie's Art College.
Essential
When judging one piece of Grottaglie pottery against the next, remember that imperfections can add to a handmade item's quality, not detract from it. Any pottery created on a wheel is, by definition, far from being mass produced, and sometimes the most intriguing touches are the indents, swivels, and swirls created by the potter's fingers.
Part of what makes Grottaglie's ceramics unique is that they are, for the most part, made from locally extracted clay, but the true way to tell whether a local potter is schooled in the old ways is by watching him work the clay on his wheel. Local potters here still use the kind of wheel invented by the Greeks, though they've traded the foot pedal for an electric motor that makes the wheel spin. You can learn more about the history of Grottaglie ceramics, or see selections from the collections of local artisans, in English at
Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo
This is the oldest Western European shrine to the archangel Michael, who is one of the primary angels in both the Christian and Islamic faiths. Michael is said to have left his own footprint here, and it is said that his statue covers the site of that impression. Countless believers have left traces of their own footprints here through graffiti, which you can see as you walk up toward the sanctuary itself.
There is no entry fee, but keep an eye on your wallet here. Plenty of shysters will try to get you to give them money for everything from fake tours to rental car parking.
Isole Tremiti
Arguably the epitome of rocky seascape beauty in this part of Italy, the three Tremiti Islands offer a single sandy beach and so many photo opportunities that you might as well toss your lens cap into the sea. San Domino has the most to offer tourists (including that aforementioned beach), Capraia is uninhabited, and San Nicola is home to a monastery from whence, it is said, the dead monk who resides there tousles up a vicious storm anytime anyone tries to move his corpse.
The main draw here, though, is the crystal-blue waters surrounded by those magnificent rock formations. You can access them by taking a ferry ride from Peschici between April and September. Tickets are usually cheap, no more than a few euro even in the busiest summer months.
