5 Days in Bari

On the edge of Bari Vecchia, next to the Teatro Margherita, the small boats tie up and the fishermen sell the catch straight from the quay. Locals call the spot N'derr la Lanze, and the working part of the morning is roughly 7 to 13, busiest around 8 to 10. You'll see octopus beaten against the stone to tenderize it, and sea urchins and mussels opened on the spot and eaten with lemon. It's the raw-seafood habit of Bari in its plainest form.

Be realistic: this isn't a restaurant, hygiene is dockside, and the market has been shrinking, with fewer fishermen and stalls. Go to watch, and buy one thing if it appeals.

Walk five minutes inland to Via dell'Arco Basso, known to everyone as the strada delle orecchiette. Orecchiette ("little ears") are the pasta of Puglia and Basilicata, made with durum flour, water and salt and shaped by dragging a small piece of dough with the thumb. Here the women of the old town set up tables outside their doors from about 8 am and do it in front of you.

It's also a place with some drama. A 2019 tourist video claimed that part of what was sold was industrial pasta, and the same year the press reported stalls selling without receipts. So treat it as a view of a living craft first and a shopping errand second, and buy from the table where hands are actually working.

This is the reason Bari matters beyond Italy. In 1087 sixty-two sailors from Bari took the bones of Saint Nicholas from his tomb at Myra, in what is now Turkey, and landed them in Bari on 9 May, beating Venice to the relics. The crypt was consecrated in 1089 with Pope Urban II present, the whole church in 1197. The result is a model of Apulian Romanesque, square and fortress-like, with two low towers flanking the facade.

Go inside for three things: the crypt, with 26 columns, where the saint's remains lie under the altar; the stone bishop's throne carved for Elias, the abbot who became the first archbishop of Bari; and the gilded wooden ceiling, nearly all that's left of the Baroque makeover stripped away in the 20th century. It's a pilgrimage site for Catholic and Orthodox Christians, Serbian ones above all. Saint Nicholas, by the way, is the figure who became Santa Claus.

For lunch, do what Bari does and eat focaccia standing up. Focaccia barese is a soft, thick, oily flatbread made with durum semolina and boiled potato, baked in a round tin with plenty of olive oil and topped with fresh tomatoes and olives. Locals call it fecàzze, and it's the bakery's answer to pizza.

Panificio Fiore, on Strada Palazzo di Città a couple of minutes from the Basilica, is the one everyone is sent to, and its focaccia won a competition in 2019. Expect a queue, and check its hours on the day, since small bakeries change them. Other old-town bakeries make it just as well.

A minute from the Basilica, the cathedral is the quieter of the two big churches, with far fewer pilgrims. It's dedicated to Saint Sabinus, a bishop of Canosa whose relics were brought here in the 9th century. The present church was built mostly in the last thirty years of the 12th century, after William I of Sicily, called the Wicked, destroyed the Byzantine cathedral in 1156. To the right of the transept you can still see traces of the older floor, which continues under the nave.

Roger II of Sicily built Bari's fortress in 1131, William I demolished it in 1156, and it was rebuilt for Frederick II of Swabia, hence the name Norman-Swabian. In the 16th century it was reworked for the age of cannon. What you see is a square-towered block with a deep, wide moat. Inside is a gipsoteca, a museum of plaster casts.

Go for the building more than the museum. A good ending is the gelateria directly opposite the entrance, Gentile, a local institution whose family traces the business back to 1880.

Eat at one of the family trattorias inside the walls rather than on the main squares. Gambero Rosso's March 2026 list includes Antò Cucina e Sapori Tipici, a simple family-run place about 200 meters from the Basilica, serving orecchiette with cime di rapa (turnip tops), orecchiette with meat rolls in tomato sauce, and riso, patate e cozze, rice, potato and mussels baked together.

Afterwards walk to the edge of the old town, around Largo Albicocca, for the view across the Adriatic.

Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law and king of Naples, laid the first stone of a new district south of the old town on 24 April 1813, and the walls of the medieval city came down in the following years. The result, the Borgo Murattiano, is a chessboard of broad straight streets, closer to an American city than a medieval one, and its spine is Via Sparano, the city's main shopping street. Corso Vittorio Emanuele II marks the line where the old walls stood.

Walk it as the Baresi do: in the morning, window shopping, with a coffee at a standing bar. Palazzo Mincuzzi, on the corner of Via Sparano and Via Putignani, was designed in 1928 by Aldo Forcignano and still has shops at street level. Keep your eyes up and don't expect charm: this is a prosperous city center, not a museum.

The Petruzzelli is the largest theater in Bari and the fourth largest in Italy. Two brothers, Bari shipbuilders and traders, had it built, and it opened on 14 February 1903 with Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. In the night of 26-27 October 1991 it was destroyed by arson, with Norma the last opera performed. It reopened on 4 October 2009, nearly 18 years after the fire.

The guided visit lasts about 30 minutes, covers the foyer and the auditorium, and runs in Italian and English together when foreign visitors are present. Tickets go on sale at the box office 30 minutes before each tour, so there's nothing to book. It's a working opera house, so the calendar changes: this autumn Il Trovatore runs until 27 October. A ticket to a performance is the better answer if you can spare an evening.

For lunch, the other fried and folded thing of Bari. A panzerotto is a small half-moon of pizza dough filled with tomato and mozzarella, deep-fried and handed over too hot to eat. In Naples the same idea is called pizza fritta, which is a good reason to compare when you read our Naples guide.

Gambero Rosso's list of the best panzerotti includes Mastrociccio on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, a fast-food counter with generous portions at roughly 3 to 6.50 EUR. It's a take-away, so eat on a bench by the sea and keep napkins close.

The long seafront is Bari's living room. The monumental promenade was built under the Fascist regime, with the strip of land between the old town and the sea added to it, and it now runs for kilometers along the Adriatic. Start at the Teatro Margherita, the theater at the water's edge beside the old harbor. Further along is the Kursaal Santalucia on Lungomare Araldo di Crollalanza, built in the late Liberty style and still a cinema and theater.

Walk with the sea beside you and don't plan too much. In the afternoon, families, joggers and fishermen share the promenade, and in September the Fiera del Levante, a trade fair created in 1929, fills its grounds on the seafront.

Bari has a public beach inside the city. Pane e Pomodoro, on the south side, is a sand beach that slopes gently into the water, and it's where the Baresi go on a summer day, so expect crowds in July and August. Further along the coast is Torre Quetta, with a Trenitalia stop named after it. The sea is warm enough for a proper swim roughly from June to September, and in late October it's around 20 C, so only a few swimmers go in. The walk is worth it anyway for the evening light.

Finish where the evening crowd gathers. Piazza Mercantile and nearby Piazza del Ferrarese, on the border between the old town and Murat, are the two squares for an aperitivo, a good moment to try a Primitivo or a Negroamaro by the glass. Panzeropoli by Benny on Piazza Mercantile specializes in panzerotti, baked or fried. For a sit-down meal, walk back into the lanes of Bari Vecchia and pick the place with regional dishes on a short menu.

Polignano a Mare, about 17,000 people, is built on a rocky spur above the Adriatic, with sea caves under the old town. It was a bronze age settlement and later sat on the Roman Via Traiana. You enter the old town through the Arco Marchesale, a gate in the 1530 walls that became the only way in by 1780.

Inside, the lanes are small and white, with the Chiesa Matrice of Santa Maria Assunta on Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, a cathedral until 1818. Walk to the terraces on the cliff edge: the view over the sea is the point of the town. Domenico Modugno, who wrote and sang Nel blu dipinto di blu, better known as Volare, was born here in 1928, and there's a statue of him on the seafront.

The famous view of Polignano is Lama Monachile, a narrow inlet cutting into the cliffs just west of the old town, with a small pebble beach at its end and an arched bridge across it. The bridge stands on the line of the old Roman Via Traiana, though the structure you see dates from Bourbon times. The cove was named for the monk seals that once lived here, and the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series is a regular stop, with platforms 20 to 30 meters up.

The pebble beach is small, and in July and August there's little room for a towel. The sea is best from June to September (around 22 C in June, 25 C in July and August, 24 C in September), and in October it's around 20 C. For more space, Cala Paura is a free rocky cove near the center where you can rent umbrellas and deck chairs in summer.

Polignano's own drink is the caffè speciale: espresso with sugar, lemon zest, cream and amaretto. It's sweet, and you'll either love it or consider it dessert. A well-known place to try it is the gelateria on Piazza Garibaldi, Il Mago del Gelato, which makes ice cream and granita as well.

For lunch, Via San Vito near the cove has small focaccia places such as La Rotellina. The famous restaurant is the Grotta Palazzese, inside a sea cave on Via Narciso, priced as a luxury. A focaccia and a coffee do the job for a tenth of the cost.

A short hop by train from Polignano, Monopoli is a working town with an old center you can walk in an hour, about a 15-minute walk from the station. The old harbor, Porto Antico, is best at sunrise or sunset. The Castle of Charles V, finished in 1525 on a pentagonal plan, was a prison from the early 19th century until 1969 and now hosts art exhibitions. The cathedral, the Basilica of the Madonna della Madia, is an 18th-century church, and the coastal Castle of Santo Stefano, built in 1086 and later a Benedictine monastery, lies outside the center.

South of the old town there are many small free beaches and beach clubs within walking distance, and in summer a bus has linked the station to them (listed from June to August, so check). They're small coves rather than long sand beaches. Bring water shoes and a towel. The swim months are about June to September; in October the sea is around 20 C.

Alberobello is the only town in Italy built around a whole district of trulli, the round dry-stone houses with conical roofs. Rione Monti is the hillside of them: hundreds, in rows of dry-stone houses, their roofs topped with decorative pinnacles that many say were the builder's signature. The UNESCO listing dates from 6 December 1996.

The popular story is that the local count had peasants build without mortar so that a village could be dismantled before a royal inspector arrived, dodging a tax on new settlements. The law behind it, the Pragmatica de Baronibus, was real, but the link to the trulli is a maybe. In 1797 King Ferdinand IV freed the village from its feudal lord and made it a royal town. Today many trulli on Rione Monti are souvenir shops or restaurants, which can feel like a theme park. Look at the roofs and the lanes, and head on.

The other quarter, Aia Piccola, is smaller and quieter: around 400 trulli, less crowded than the hillside opposite.

The Trullo Sovrano, on Piazza Sacramento, is the only two-storey trullo, 14 meters high, and a house museum you can go inside. It began as a farm trullo, and a local scholar gave it its name in 1916. Casa Pezzolla, a complex of 15 trulli joined together from the 18th century, holds the town's local history museum. Don't skip the church of Sant'Antonio di Padova, built to echo the trulli, with a 21-meter dome.

Eat a little away from the trulli streets, where menus come in four languages. Two long-standing local tips are Gli Ulivi, just outside town and closed on Wednesdays, and La Cantina, a small central restaurant with few seats. Both come from older listings, so check they're open.

Order what the area does: orecchiette with turnip tops or tomato, grilled meat, a glass of Primitivo, and burrata, the fresh cheese with a creamy center that was developed in Apulia in the 1920s. Eat it the day it's made.

Take the train on toward Martina Franca and get off at Locorotondo, a town of about 14,000 on a hill in the Itria Valley, one of the Borghi più belli d'Italia (most beautiful villages in Italy) and holder of the Touring Club's Orange Flag. The white lime on the houses and the pitched stone roofs called cummerse are the draw: some of Alberobello's look without the same crowds. Via Nardelli, known locally as the lungomare because it overlooks the valley rather than the sea, gives the view.

If the timetable lets you stay, Via Nardelli, the balcony street over the valley, is the place for a drink at the close of the day, with the view over the trulli in the fields below. Don't push it if the trains are thin: a missed last train means a taxi or an overnight.

From Matera Centrale it's a 20-minute walk down to the Sassi, or you can take the Linea Sassi bus every 30 minutes, with tickets sold on board. Start on Piazza Vittorio Veneto, on the edge of the old city. Under it is the Palombaro Lungo, a huge underground cistern for rainwater, big enough to cross by boat, which you visit on a guided route. It's a good first stop because the Sassi were also a water system: cisterns, channels and wells cut into the rock.

The Sassi are two quarters cut into the walls of a ravine: Sasso Barisano to the north, on the side facing the road to Bari, and Sasso Caveoso to the south. Between them a rock spur, the Civita, carries the cathedral, built in 1268-1270. The Sassi have been lived in for thousands of years, and UNESCO inscribed them in 1993, the first site in southern Italy on the list.

Start with the Barisano, which is partly developed for offices and housing, and let the lanes lead you down toward the ravine. Then walk up to the cathedral, and the Palazzo Pomarici on the Civita, where the MUSMA contemporary sculpture museum sits. Matera was a European Capital of Culture in 2019, and film crews have used it for decades, from Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew to No Time to Die.

The bread of Matera has PGI (protected geographical indication) status, and a slice with olive oil is the right start. The city sits between Puglia and Basilicata, so the menu leans on both kitchens, with orecchiette and local cured meats and cheeses. Eat in the old town or just above it, avoid places with touts at the door, and finish with Amaro Lucano, the herbal liqueur made in Pisticci, in Basilicata.

Sasso Caveoso is shaped like the seats of a theater going down to the ravine, with cave houses stacked in steps. On the crag at its center stands the white church of Santa Maria de Idris. The rock churches cut into the hillside are the other reason for the UNESCO listing, and some still hold frescoes in which the Madonnas look more like village women than queens.

The story of why the Sassi were emptied is worth knowing. Carlo Levi, sent into internal exile by the Fascist regime, wrote about them in Christ Stopped at Eboli: about 15,000 people, half the city, lived in caves with no sewers, often with their animals, and infant mortality was four times the national average. A law of 1952 moved families into new housing between 1952 and 1965.

To feel what it was like, visit a casa grotta, a cave house arranged the way families lived before the evacuation. The Casa Grotta di Vico Solitario in Sasso Caveoso is the best known: a dwelling cut in the rock and furnished with the furniture and tools of the period. Seeing the size of the room makes the numbers in the history real.

If you have daylight left, the Belvedere di Murgia Timone, on the other side of the ravine, gives the postcard view of the Sassi, but it's a hike, so skip it if the clock is short.