Stone houses, stone walls and cave dwellers
Date: 12 – 15 July 2025
12 July | Brindisi – Martina Franca
Brindisi is an attractive port city with a wide pedestrian promenade along the harbour — and a surprising lack of apartments or hotels overlooking it. There’s a large Roman column marking the end of the Via Appia, the ancient road from Rome. I’ve got a bit of a thing for old Roman roads, so Brindisi had a head start with me.
We thought we should check out the much-praised beaches north of the city. After a painful wind through shoreline suburbs, our first glimpse of this supposed paradise was people perched on deck chairs scattered across a wide reef — no way to swim, but at least they could see the sea. The next 20 km revealed every scrap of sandy shoreline occupied by lidos, each with loud music and bars. I said to Jill the nearest nice beach is in New Zealand, and we headed inland towards trullo country.
Trulli are the cone-shaped houses Puglia is famous for. Stacked stone walls and houses are everywhere in the Mediterranean — a natural way of clearing fields and creating permanent structures — but these take it to another level. The first ones we saw were like upside-down grey ice cream cones in an olive grove. We trespassed to have a closer look inside — relax, they weren’t occupied.
Soon we were among whitewashed architectural cones perched incongruously on New Mexican-inspired lifestyle blocks in subdivided olive orchards. Thankfully, that didn’t last long, but it showed how strong a theme the trulli are in this region. We spent the afternoon riding narrow lanes lined with dry stone walls, passing ancient olive groves and trulli both derelict and spruced up for tourist accommodation. Finally, we climbed to Martina Franca, where we’d booked a place in the Old Town — with some trepidation.
Happily, it turned out to be an unexploited old town with tidy, narrow streets and mostly lived-in houses. Puglia has a reputation as Original Italy and, although it’s becoming increasingly discovered, it largely ignores its potential for tour buses of gawping day trippers. After a late dinner, we joined the passeggiata — the leisurely Italian evening stroll — and found the streets packed with locals. Groups of children played, teenagers hung out stylishly, families wandered, and cafes were full. Mediterraneans start going out at 9 or 10 o’clock — about when Ponsonby is closing — and when we called it a night at midnight, they showed no sign of slowing down.
Accom: Domus Alba
13 July | Alberobello and Locorotondo
Next stop was Alberobello, with a side trip to Locorotondo — the first for its UNESCO-listed trulli (hundreds of them, sanitized and entirely for tourists), the second because of all the o’s in its name. Both are firmly on the tourist circuit, especially Alberobello, dangerously veering towards becoming Disneyfied.
The roads around them more than made up for it, winding past stone walls, olive groves, genuine trulli, and plenty of simple, rustic beauty.
Accom: Casa Vacanza Trullo Dimora Storica Morea
14–15 July | Matera
Next came Matera — another UNESCO site, famous for its cave-dwelling recent past. The Italian government forcibly evicted its residents in 1950, partly because they were embarrassed by such primitive living conditions when trying to join the postwar developed nations. There was also the small matter of rampant disease, no water or sanitation, and a 58% child mortality rate.
Over the last twenty years, the former caves have been tastefully converted into hotels and shops, and the tourists are lapping it up. So did we. We took a guided tour with a highly enthusiastic local archaeologist who explained that the area has been continuously inhabited for 14,000 years — the third oldest such place in the world.
You can’t see the caves from the streets because over the centuries they’ve been built outward. The cliffs now look like Flintstones-style apartment blocks, with neighbours above building onto the arched roofs of those below and streets forming where needed. A vast interconnected cistern system stores winter water for the long, dry summer — remarkable engineering by people who were, in relative terms, just out of the Stone Age.
Three days of being tourists is enough. It’s time we started travelling again.
Accom: L’ Alba Sulla Murgia
Brindisi to Martina Franca
Max elevation: 428 m
Min elevation: 0 m
Total climbing: 1363 m
Total descent: -959 m
Total time: 08:19:28
to Alberobello and Locorotondo
Max elevation: 431 m
Min elevation: 348 m
Total climbing: 713 m
Total descent: -728 m
Total time: 07:07:59
to Matera
Max elevation: 454 m
Min elevation: 317 m
Total climbing: 912 m
Total descent: -946 m
Total time: 06:23:11
Wonderful Blog Steve and fantastic slide show. What a trip, what photos! Love some of those old flagstones. And the amazing looking place you stayed in, complete with your bikes inside, we like that.