KYQ4: Puglia: Taranto Region

Trulli in Alberobello

l had visited Puglia before on an immigrant ferry from Piraeus along with several hundred Greeks who were escaping the colonels who were in power. It was the final leg of a 4-week tour of Greece and Italy in 1970. Harold Wilson had limited the currency that you could take out of the country to £50. I took £36 to cover food, travel and accommodation. After living for little more than a £1 a day by sleeping on beaches or in rooms and eating frugally, we landed at Brindisi where we spent a night before a mini grand tour of Rome and Florence and onto Milan to watch AC Milan v Lazio at the San Siro before catching a student flight back to Manchester. There had been no time to linger in Puglia.

This time it was different, it was part of maybe our last European exodus before the crazy prospect of Brexit. We had booked five days in the Taranto area and then moved down to the Salento region in the heel of Italy with its spectacular coastline of sandy beaches and rocky cliffs. We spent the first part of the trip north of Taranto staying at an old Masseria that accommodated its guests in a group of Trulli. It was close to the historic town of Martina Franca and not far from the whitewashed splendours of Locorotondo and Trulli of Alberobello. At the fag end of the tourist season, they all provided photogenic insights into the turbulent history of Puglia.

Martina Franca was our nearest town and its historic centre was the ideal location to spend the morning, its fine limestone pavements and narrow alleys opening onto numerous piazzas that inevitably held churches, clock towers, restaurants and artistic street furniture. The rubbish was being collected by electric vehicles and there were few vehicles or motorcycles to disturb the serenity of the old town. The Basilica di San Martino with its impressive Baroque facade stands at the east end of Piazza Plebiscito. The Palazzo Ducale hosts the civic functions and there was an exhibition of the famous Italian theatre and film impresario, Paulo Grassi, that gave clues to the prominence of the town as a cultural centre that holds an opera festival every July.

We moved on to Locorotundo where we had an absolutely fabulous Apulian lunch at the next table to Jennifer Saunders and Ade Edmundson. We were no longer the Young Ones. The treat was completed when the supreme court found Boris Johnson guilty of proroguing parliament without justification. The Puglian sun had arrived as well so we drove the few miles to Alberobello. It has become a major tourist destination to see the remarkable streets of Trulli. They have now been whitewashed and become summer homes to virtually every Milanese lawyer according to the blurb. It was late afternoon and the parties of tourists were still tramping around the streets of Trulli following the flags of their guides. Several Trullo had been opened up so the visitors could see the original interiors before they were gentrified by the second homers.

The Trulli were more impressive in the surrounding agricultural lands where they had been built in the indigenous limestone and linked by limestone stone walls that enclosed olive groves, rough grazing and crops that could withstand the scorching summer sun in the heel of Italy. I was reading a book about the history of Puglia, which was dominated by successive waves of invaders from Turkey, Greece, Spain as well as from other Italian regions. The Masseria had large landholdings and the
workers were impoverished with the owners very often absent landlords. After the Great War, the election of socialist representatives in the region had seen legislation for improved working conditions and wages but these were overturned when the fascists under Mussolini reverted to control on behalf of the wealthy owners of the Masseria and repression of striking workers.

The weather was improving by the day as the rains of September passed and another dry spell began with the day temperature of 27°C perfect for touring and days at the beach. We drove beyond Taranto to the sandy beaches of the Gulf of Taranto, holiday chalets stretched for thirty or so miles, most of which were closed up as were most of the cafes and restaurants. Summer holidays really distort movement patterns, by late September the unbearable heat had given way to temperatures of both air and sea that were optimal. It was only the chaotic traffic that interrupted the relaxed laid back lifestyle. Roads are seldom lined, traffic signs are random and Italian drivers entered junctions and crossroads with no warning. Driving back through Taranto after a day at the beaches was more dangerous than it must have been for the British troops when they landed in 1943 during Operation Slapstick.

We had a final day walking in the Holm Oak forests at Bosco di Planelle. The regional park was surrounded by military sites but the trails through the woods were a perfect foil to the open landscapes and we met a couple of old porcini hunters filling buckets with a variety of funghi, they showed us a tree that was reputedly 2000 years old and directed us to an old Trullo that was becoming a ruin but gave a better perspective of the original living conditions than those we had encountered in Alberobello. We finished the day in the fine historic centre of Martina Franca with a lunch in the well-named Piazza Plebiscito that was throbbing with happy visitors and contented citizens..