Taranto is not one of Italy’s Instagram destinations. There are no grand piazzas lined by statues from Michelangelo and other artists whose names you may remember from high school, no scenic inland waterways that break up the sunlight into thousand shards of sparkle. Taranto’s beauty is of a different order – and, on top of…
For many years, Lecce was the only major tourist destination in the entire mezzogiorno, the bottom of the Italian boot south of Naples. The town likes to style itself as the “Florence of the South” and can bolster this claim with some great architecture from different periods … … but particularly with its richly decorated…
Many people come to Brindisi, but few stay for longer than it takes to hop on to a ferry or a train. Brindisi is not a destination but a hub: tourists who are flying in to visit the heel of the Italian boot often take a bus to their holiday destination directly from Brindisi airport…
Last week, I said that Bari was not a mandatory stop on the Great Italian Tourist Tour. Today, I would like to qualify that a little. It is true that most printed travel guides refer to Bari only in passing, but they do recommend it as a convenient stopover to a place which has become…
Bari, the largest city on the Adriatic coast, is not a mandatory stop on the Great Italian Tourist Trail. No Renaissance masterpieces are on public display, the town’s history does not feature names that you would recognize from old High School lessons, and you will not see reflections of magnificent medieval architecture in the sparkling…