Help with Puglia Area

I am no expert on this region, but we had a lovely ten full days in Puglia in April - other than one day in particular due to rain and other factors.

Of course, the question is what do you want to experience there. Is it beaches, smaller towns, food, cooking classes or something else. Wine? Baroque architecture?

The Renaissance was up north, so Puglia doesn’t have the 14th to 16th Century art. Caravaggio influenced art there in the 1600s and there are Baroque churches, if those matter to you.

There’s a lot of fairly early Christian history and churches in Puglia. St Nicholas dates to the 4th century and his tomb is in the crypt of the Duomo in Bari. We quite liked Bari. If you plan to have a car, or travel by train, there’s a lot of ground you can cover. Train will be less efficient than a car, though a car will be spendier. Both Ostuni and Monopoli should work out as a base. (BTW, the best pizza we had in southern Italy was in Ostuni, not Naples.)

The Duomo in Otranto, much further south, has noteworthy mosaics from early Christianity when Otranto was under the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire.

We covered a lot of ground traveling by e-bike arranged through Puglia Cycle Tours. SEE our trip report at https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/southern-italy-30-days-three-ways-to-travel. That report mentions some highs - and our one low. It also touches on all towns/cities you mentioned other than Brindisi, plus others.

If you’re up for a guided or self-guide bike or e-bike tour, check out https://www.pugliacycletours.com We recommend them, despite the one day that was less than ideal. (Even if you choose to stick with car or train travel, their itineraries might give you some ideas. Still, we’re big fans of e-biking by self-guided tours at least when the weather is reliably dry.)

The one place where I would have liked to have spent a little more time is Matera, not technically in Puglia but quite close by on the eastern edge of Basilicata. We did not get to Brindisi or the Ionian coast, so there is nothing I can say about those.

Late note: not sure how close the train gets to the hilltop town of Ostuni; we biked from there to near Carovigno to get a train to Lecce with our e-bikes.

What is the purpose of your trip: beaches? History and art? Quaint towns?

We spent 2 weeks in Puglia. No car, just public transportation. Visit was… 2 nights Polignano a Mare, 4 nights Lecce, 2 nights Grottaglie, 2 nights Ostuni, 2 nights Monopoli, 1 night Brindisi. Every town was unique, lovely, and held interesting art, food, people. Our favorites were Lecce - stunning churches and a beautiful evening la passeggiata. And Grottaglie - home of over 60 ceramic artisans. My words could not accurately describe the beauty. I did much research before our trip - one travel blog that was helpful was Along Dusty Roads.
https://www.alongdustyroads.com/posts/puglia-itinerary-road-trip-italy

We're in Lecce 5 days in September. Never been. We'll use trains to see other Puglian locations. Maybe the OP and I can compare notes after we're done. Many thanks to Fred and Gina for your experience and insights.

I spent 10 days in Puglia, followed by 2 days in Matera, earlier this month. Transportation was mostly easy, although getting to Matera from Lecce involved taking the train back to Bari and then catching a small, regional line to Matera. We rented a car for 3 days, but that was mainly to facilitate getting back and forth between Lecce and Santa Maria di Leuca. We loved our time in Puglia and highly recommend it.

A couple of posts with tips and photos below:
https://delsoblogger.blog/2024/07/17/pronto-polignano/
https://delsoblogger.blog/2024/07/19/lovely-leuca/
https://delsoblogger.blog/2024/07/22/lessons-learned-in-santa-maria-di-leuca/

Thank you to all for your informative posts. We have traveled extensively over Italy and this area is one that we have not seen. We most always travel by train when venturing to other small towns etc. I do love the idea of renting an e-bike and exploring. We are headed there at the end of September and our interests are pretty much everything that has been mentioned, art, architecture, beaches and just coming across some wonderful local trattorias etc. Matera is on my list as I would like to have one full day and evening there. Days are flexible as we are leaving Sept 17 from Chicago to London for just a night and then on to Amsterdam for two days then to Brussels where we will fly out of Brussels to Milan. Still figuring out if I might stop in Liguria region again possibly for two days but my goal is to arrive in Bari on the 28 hopefully and then train back to Rome on the 6th of October for a few days to return home on Oct 9. We always end in Rome!

Peschici, Vico del Gargano and Vieste in the Gargano peninsula.
Polignano and Otranto on the coast. Otranto is a lovely town.
Lecce (baroque), Ostuni
Alberobello, Locorotondo
Matera.

Puglia is a region where I recommend ro rent a car. The coastal towns of the Adriatic are decently connected by train, but the rest requires buses or some minor railways. A car would be therefore more efficient, and aside big cities like Bari, they are not difficult to navigate.

We found the book "Lonely Planet Puglia & Basilicata" useful in describing Puglia and for planning our visit last September. It's about 15 years old but the towns haven't changed that much (the train times in the book are mostly wrong though). We also looked for blogs with stories from travel in Puglia, and watched YouTube videos such as walking tours.

We stayed in Lecce and took trains and once a bus to visit nearby towns. Figure you can visit one town a day. Restaurants were open until around 2pm and then closed until dinner at around 7-8pm. Stores closed by 1pm and didn't reopen until 4-5pm or so. Often churches and museums are closed in the afternoon as well. So for most tourists they get out in the morning and visit, have lunch, then relax in the afternoon (at the coast, at the hotel, etc)

I second the recommendation for the Lonely Planet guide. On our three-week trip to Puglia we used only public transportation, and the best information about that was in the back of the guidebook.

Puglia is a long, skinny region. I would not attempt to spend a week there and base in only one place, even with a car. For four or five nights I found Lecce a workable, single base, because at the time of my 2015 trip there was a local travel agency arranging transportation-only day trips from Lecce to many smaller towns in the area. I don't know whether that is happening now, post pandemic.

OP TS, below is our related TR (no fotos). We rented in Lecce and Monopoli, then moved north after that. *You may need to scroll back to the top. Note that over on Fodors, I go by 'zebec' (zee-bek).
Hope this helps.
I am done. The end.
https://www.fodors.com/community/europe/bella-puglia-also-basilicata-and-rome-1634280/page2/

Thank you some much for all the information! Gping to put together my final itinerary this weekend and will post a trip report after we arrive back!

Hi, I was in Puglia in May - traveled in Italy most of the month, and I really enjoyed the Puglia area! Here’s my trip report with details of what I did and where I stayed at Polignano a Mare, Bari, Alberobello, Locorotondo, Martina Franca & Lecce. I traveled by train and one bus to reach Alberobello from Bari.

Definitely rent an ebike some place in the valley to enjoy the countryside and small cities!

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/my-1-month-independent-trip-to-southern-italy-tribute-to-my-husband