Puglia: trulli, a castle, and a sick olive

Puglia holds five World Heritage listings and one live plant health emergency, Xylella fastidiosa, which since 2013 has changed the olive landscape a visitor actually sees in Salento.

Five listings, and three of them are shared

Castel del Monte, inscribed in 1996, and the trulli of Alberobello, also 1996, belong to Puglia alone. The other three are joint: the primeval beech forests from 2007, the Longobard power centers from 2011, and the Via Appia added in 2024 with Lazio, Campania and Basilicata.

The region recorded 17,894,361¹ overnight stays in 2024, 3.84%¹ of the national total, and it is one of the few southern regions with two busy airports feeding it, Bari at 7,977,881¹⁵ passengers in 2025 and Brindisi at 3,444,438¹⁶.

Alberobello: 1,500 trulli on 10.52 hectares

The trulli were inscribed in 1996 under criteria iii, iv and v, over a protected zone of 10.52⁴ hectares covering the Rione Monti and Rione Aia Piccola districts, with more than 1,500⁴ conical buildings inside it.

The technique is dry stone: limestone slabs called chiancarelle, no mortar, a double wall with a loose core, and buried cisterns for rainwater. Trulli existed in Rione Monti by the mid 16th century and the district expanded after 1620⁴; in 1797⁴ Ferdinand IV granted Alberobello the status of royal town, and new trullo building fell away. Parts of the town were declared national monuments between 1909 and 1936.

The Trullo Sovrano, the only two story one, has a single €2.50 ticket. It opens 10:00 am to 12:45 pm and 3:30 pm to 6:00 pm from November to March, closing at 6:30 pm from April to October.

Castel del Monte: 120 people a slot, 45 minutes

Entry costs €9 full and €2 reduced, or €12 and €3 on the combined ticket with the castle at Trani. Hours are 9:00 am to 5:45 pm from October 1 to March 31 and 10:00 am to 6:45 pm from April 1 to September 30, closed December 25 and January 1.

The cap matters: 120⁷ people per time slot, and the visit itself is limited to 45 minutes. Getting there is its own step, because no private car reaches the building. You park on the main road and take a paid shuttle; without a car, take the train to Andria and the ASA bus number 6, daily from April 1 to November 1 and weekends only otherwise.

The bacterium that redrew the Salento

Xylella fastidiosa was detected on Salento olive trees in October 2013, the first documented case in Europe. The organism is subspecies pauca, strain ST53, locally called CoDiRO, and it causes rapid desiccation and death of the olive. The EFSA host database lists 696⁹ species in 88 botanical families, including citrus, grapevine and many ornamentals.

The Leccino cultivar is tolerant, which is why replanting looks the way it does. What you see between Gallipoli and Otranto is a landscape in the middle of being remade, and it isn't finished. There is a full account at the bacterium that redrew Salento.

What the region is doing, in numbers

Puglia has committed more than €15 million to the 2024 to 2026 Xylella action plan, with monitoring run by ARIF, the regional agency for irrigation and forestry, and compensation available to both nurseries and affected growers.

Under EU regulation 2024/2504¹⁰ the containment band inside the infected zone was narrowed from 5 km to 2 km. That's a technical change with a visible effect: the strip where felling and treatment rules apply is now much narrower than it was.

Caves, forest, islands, and one museum card

The Castellana caves run 3,348¹¹ m and reach 122¹¹ m below the surface at a constant 62°F (16.5°C¹¹). Two routes exist: 1 km in 50 minutes, or 3 km in 100 min¹¹utes including the Grotta Bianca.

The Foresta Umbra in the Gargano National Park covers more than 12,000¹² hectares and contains four state nature reserves, Umbra at 399¹² hectares, Ischitella and Carpino at 299¹², Sfilzi at 56 and Falascone at 48. It's the only place where the depressed beech wood phenomenon is observed, with beeches growing far lower than they should.

The Tremiti islands are the only archipelago in the Adriatic, 20 km off the northern Gargano coast: five islands over 3 square kilometers, with 400¹³ residents, forming the smallest municipality in Puglia. The Puglia Musei Card costs €20 and gives six months of access to the regional state museums, excluding Mattinata and the Castello Carlo V in Lecce.

Pane di Altamura DOP has been in the EU register since July 19, 2003, and it's the loaf that keeps for a week.

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