Why Puglia’s sluggish tempo makes it one among Italy’s prime street journeys

My vacation spot beckons throughout the undulating valley, framed by sunbaked orchards and a pastel sky rising heavy with nightfall: a low-rise masseria (farm property), alone within the panorama however for a dusting of sheep. Dinner awaits down the uneven observe forward however, unwilling for the journey to finish, I’ve slowed my automotive to a crawl. There’s one thing hypnotic about driving by means of the hinterland of Italy’s heel — the timeless surroundings and drowsy heat invite a slower tempo of journey.

Finally pulling up at restaurant Le Stanzie, I comply with voices across the sturdy major home, by means of leafy vegetable patches and patios piled with aesthetically stacked produce, to find Chiara Rimo holding court docket with a gaggle of diners. Beneath their ft is the uneven paving of a Roman street. “Don’t ask me how old the masseria is — we cannot possibly know — but every era has left its mark,” says the younger, dark-haired hostess. “Our name comes from the Latin for ‘rooms’. This has long been a place of hospitality.”

Despite its imprecise provenance, that is actually one of many oldest agricultural estates in Salento, essentially the most southerly area of Puglia. “Ask me if I’m Pugliese and I’ll say no, I’m Salentina. This part of Italy is truly another country,” Chiara tells me proudly, persevering with her tour by means of the largely Sixteenth-century farmhouse, salvaged from wreck as a pioneering farm-to-table restaurant in 1999. “It feels frozen in time, no?” she says, depositing me at my desk, tucked away in a vaulted, candlelit pantry lined with preserves.

The menu is seasonal and quick — an genuine expression of Salento’s cucina povera: conventional peasant cooking. I tuck right into a crunchy starter of fried bread and black beans, then devour recent, hand-pulled pasta doused with a wealthy pork ragu, paired with an area Negroamaro wine, which tastes of darkish berries. Courses maintain coming, however at a leisurely tempo; eating is an artwork kind right here. When it’s lastly time to go away, Chiara and I hug like outdated buddies, and she or he presses a jar of lemon marmalade into my palms.

Continental drift

Over the next days, Salento continues to be beneficiant in sharing its bounty. I comply with byways advisable by Audley Travel, the tour firm that designed my bespoke journey, tracing the Adriatic south. I head from the butter-hued baroque monuments of Lecce alongside coastal roads fringed with wildflowers, passing the ocean stacks of Faraglioni di Sant’Andrea. In the city of Otranto, on a promenade overlooking a marina, I meet information Gianluca Tonti, an novice historian with eyes as vivid because the shallows.

“We’re far from the rest of Italy down here and have always felt exposed to the continent to the east,” he tells me, mentioning the misty define of Albania throughout the water. The nice invasion that reshaped Otranto was in 1480, when 18,000 Ottoman troops arrived on the gates, main — so the story goes — to the beheading of 813 Christians who refused to transform. “Even though I relay this traditional version, I don’t believe a single word. The pashas were tolerant when it came to belief.” Gianluca’s interrogations of the historic canon are, I study, ordinary.

We tour the battlements of Otranto’s stocky Aragonese Castle, constructed within the late Fifteenth century by the Spanish, and wind by means of the stone lanes of the outdated city to the Cathedral of Santa Maria Annunziata. Founded in 1068 by Norman rulers, it holds a grisly ossuary of the martyrs — and, extra curiously, an astonishingly formidable 6,500sq ft medieval mosaic of biblical and folkloric characters that provides a virtually millennia-old window onto previous beliefs. Gianluca factors out King Arthur and an Amazonian warrior among the many figures depicted.

Salento’s surreal, softly cinematic high quality deepens as I proceed alongside the fantastical 30-mile stretch of street informally referred to as Litoranea Salentina. Connecting Otranto to Santa Maria di Leuca on the peninsula’s tip, it presents up timeless olive groves and the shifting hues of the Mediterranean, snaking down the coast previous the lighthouse at Punta Palascìa, the cliff-cut lidos of Santa Cesarea Terme, the ocean caves surrounding Castro Marina and the picturesque harbour of Porto di Tricase.

At every, I pull over for a couple of minutes or just a few hours, guided by whim and, usually, my starvation. It’s the form of unstructured, sluggish journey that reaps rewards — instinctual, meandering, guided by the second — and solely actually attainable on an unbiased street journey.

Backroads beckon

Another day, I discover the Ionian shoreline. The miles of delight seashores surrounding Gallipoli supply excellent distinction with the cragged Adriatic coves of Marina Serra, the place sunbathing includes draping your self nymph-like throughout the rocks and slipping into pure swimming pools to swim seems like a baptism. Sea urchins cling to the rocks beneath in still-life perfection, and fish dart away by means of shafts of sunshine as if scattering from a passing god.

With nothing however time and a tank of petrol, I cruise the empty nation roads of the inside completely undisturbed. Occasionally, I take pit stops in village cafes so off the overwhelmed observe that no English and even — to my ear — recognisable Italian is spoken. Instead, I hear one among Salento’s many dialects, a few of which have Byzantine roots, and study to order because the locals do: a caffè Leccese, an espresso shot with almond syrup served over clinking ice cubes, and a heat pasticciotto, a small pastry pie stuffed with candy egg custard.

During one such cease, Gianluca sends me textual content suggestions about native cities, which leads me to find the baroque structure of Nardò and the Fifteenth-century frescoes of Galatina’s Basilica of Santa Caterina d’Alessandria, that includes scenes from the Apocalypse and Genesis. “There are many churches in Southern Italy, but that one’s worth a trip to this land alone,” he quips after we meet once more for a closing tour in his hometown. Presicce hit headlines in 2022, when the native authorities began providing €30,000 (£26,000) to anybody prepared to maneuver there and do up an deserted constructing. “Life’s slow in Salento,” he acknowledges. “But to me, it’s still a slice of paradise.”

He takes me to pattern totally different intensities of additional virgin olive oil in third-generation producer Gianvito Negro Valiani’s trendy manufacturing unit, studying to establish the aromatic spice and ‘smoothness’ of this liquid gold. Once, Presicce’s frantoi ipogei — an enormous subterranean community of underground olive presses, carved into the mushy bedrock — supercharged the native economic system. The oil made right here was exported to the foremost cities of Europe to mild streetlamps, till the arrival of electrical energy noticed the business dwindle and the product refined for culinary use.

In distinction to these dank caverns, the place labourers slaved within the winter months between harvest and spring, Gianvito’s family-run operation gleams with polished metal. “Our traditions may be ancient, but we don’t live in the past,” he says. Nevertheless, Salento’s outdated rites of hospitality have endured — rooted on this earth, they’re as strong as a masseria, as sacred as a medieval church. “I hope you’ll join us for lunch?”