Bal Harbour

BAL HARBOUR 177 From space, the many white villages of Puglia must look like someone spilled a basket of pearls. ey run the length of the region, making up the spur and heel of the boot, and dot the inland, gleaming from afar like apparitions. Is this Italy? Looks like Greece. Or Tunisia? Or cubist paintings? Inside the villages, the mystery deepens: Stone lanes twist, dead-end, and climb to ramparts where often the sea view is a thin aquamarine ribbon. Some invader was always threatening, and small windows and strong doors are remnants of protection. Whitewash was thought to prevent plague. e Greeks were here first, and it shows: Traces of their language linger in dialects and in the bone-white houses. Towns feel as secretive as medinas, even with balconies of spilling surfinia and geraniums. Ostuni may be the prime example, but rivals include Trani, Monopoli, Martina Franca, Peschici, Vieste, and Locorotondo. e gleaming villages characterize settled Puglia, but the landscape is defined by older structures: the mysterious stone dolmens, menhirs, and trulli, scattered in the fields. Despite centuries of looting, development, and weather, a surprising number endure. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of one as you speed down a highway lined with ugly industry; often, one just appears, old as time, in an olive grove. Clusters survive around the coastal cities of Taranto and Otranto, in the Bari province, and far south into the Salento at the tip of Puglia. No one knows the function of these ancient stone structures. Dolmens—simply a flat stone on top of two vertical ones, like a table—might have been tombs or places of sacrifice, while the monolithic stone menhirs from 4000 to 1200 b.c. are thought to have been places of worship connected to fertility or sun cults, with possible astrological purposes. If both seem primitive, even foreboding, the trulli are fanciful conical dwellings skillfully made from stacked, upwardly spiraling stones, ending in a pointy top often adorned with an ornament. ough they have older roots as shelter in agricultural fields, trulli became easy housing in the 16th century, when overlords allowed their peasants to build such structures. Or, as some believe, the canny peasants built them for a specific purpose: When the owners came every few years to visit, they could pull out the keystone and the whole thing collapsed, saving them from paying tax. Owner leaves; house rebuilt. Today these strangely endearing trulli are coveted and cared for, and often they are still inhabited. ey're thrilling to spot in a field of wheat or wildflowers, but when concentrated— the town of Alberobello has more than 1,500— there's a unique atmosphere, as though you've crossed over into the land of elves and gnomes. More than that of any other region, the cuisine emphasizes vegetable and fish recipes that hark back to the roots of ancient life, when the rural folk were abjectly poor. Resourceful by necessity, they even gathered wheat grains that remained when the fields were burned after harvest; the charred grains were called arso. Make do with what you have! As it turned out, incorporating arso into the dough gave the bread a toasty aroma. e practice continues, but now by roasting, not by stoop-labor gathering. Foraging for cicoria (chicory), dandelion, hyacinth bulbs, as well as growing turnips, chickpeas, fave, and every legume possible led to the vegetable- based cuisine that now seems so contemporary. Chefs have a high awareness of biologico, organic products—more than I've seen in any other part of Italy. What a joy to graze through Puglia. ere's not a more stimulating region to visit in Italy. Everyone comes here for the secret beaches and limpid water, but there's much to do in Puglia other than bask in the sun. In addition to the characteristic white towns, some favorite stops along the way, zigzagging north to south: e "spur" at the top of the heel—the forested and hilly Gargano promontory—rivals the Amalfi Coast for scenery, especially around Vieste and Mattinata. Dine at a rickety trabocco, an old fishing structure built in the water. At the ancient town of Manfredonia, the facade of 12th-century Basilica di Siponto has been treated to an imaginative intervention by the innovative young architect Edoardo Tresoldi. e ruined church in the rear has been completely reconstructed—but in wire. e ghost of the former inhabitant! Romanesque churches in the particular Puglian style are balm to the eyes of architecture buffs. Especially moving are the ones located in Trani, Ostuni, Ruvo, Otranto, and Bitonto. Trani's has the most dramatic setting, on a windswept piazza facing the sea. Across looms what looks like a sand castle but was built in 1233 by Frederick II. Slightly inland in Troia, I found my favorite church, Santa Maria Assunta. I'm mesmerized by its magnificent stone rose window. Begun in 1093 but not finished until 1127, it anchors the town in an intimate way and reveals successive influences of Byzantine, Saracen, Norman, and Pisan Romanesque architecture. Staring up at the window while having a coffee is a double pleasure, since the bread and pastry aromas of two bakeries waft into the piazza. Excerpted from Frances Mayes's "Always Italy" by Frances Mayes with Ondine Cohane. Published by National Geographic Books. Available March 31, 2020 wherever books are sold. From top: Horseback riding along the seaside farmlands, "Always Italy" by Frances Mayes and Ondine Cohane and sunset at Masseria Torre Coccaro. COURTESY MASSERIA TORRE COCCARO

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