The quiet mood of Castel del Monte is completely different from that which greets me the next day at the Baroque village of Martina Franca, host to a weekly market on Wednesdays. Traveling from town to town, such markets are roving shopping malls, with clothes, shoes, bags, and enough tools for a hardware store heaped in stalls. All the people from the town and the countryside gather to buy household necessities and to exchange gossip. I wander about the stalls, doing some informal research on Pugliese fashion trends—from heels (towering cork platforms) to lingerie (the French pant-style seems to be making inroads) and then move on to my favorite part of any market, the food and produce.

One stand sells more than ten types of olives, a local variety of pickle, five or six kinds of preserved mushrooms, buckets of capers, sun-dried tomatoes, and hot peppers. The next is devoted to the barattiere (a cucumber-melon hybrid native to the region that has the crunch of the former and a flavor that is similar to but more delicate than the latter). Crates of peaches, their leaves still attached, are stacked next to plums, fragrant lemons, yellow melons, beets, and plump white-and-purple eggplants (the last selling for thirty cents a pound). Bushels of cherry tomatoes and turnip tops are staples at every vegetable vendor. A pickup truck’s flatbed sags under the weight of huge watermelons. An old lady watches over sacks of grain, rice, and saffron, while her neighbor, a nattily dressed farmer with his hat at a rakish tilt, has only one ware: organic brown eggs. The most popular concession is in a refrigerated truck, where a long line of people queue for capocollo (a local pork salami) and huge rounds of cacio ricotta.

I get a sense of just how complicated Puglia’s history is when I arrive in Lecce, the entry point to the southern Salentine Peninsula. In the fifteenth century, Lecce (which grew into a city under the Romans) became a Bourbon stronghold and the base for a number of Spanish and feudal revolts, all brutally repressed; this was also the period when the city’s most striking architecture was completed.

In the nineteenth century, Lecce was dubbed the Florence of the South, a title that seems apt given its particular beauty. While I don’t consider myself a Baroque fan, Lecce’s dilapidation somehow makes the over-the-top style less formal and tones down the flourishes, to great effect. The lack of crowds keeps the place peaceful, but it still feels lived in, and as with many of these Pugliese towns, there are always unexpected and often unexplained deviations from the norm: a duomo not centered, for example, with an unusually high campanile and only one entrance into the piazza. In the evening, I make my way to Casareccia, a restaurant and Lecce institution in a storefront on a nondescript street outside the city center, which exemplifies why Puglia is so refreshing. It’s Friday night, and the place is packed with locals. There is no menu, no wine list, just a few courses prepared by the husband-and-wife team who run the show. The antipasti of roasted beets, baby potato salad, and roasted peppers encrusted with cheese, and the lightly battered capers, tomatoes, and olives are all commendably simple and utterly unforgettable.

“Let me bring you another starter, and after we’ll talk of after and after,” says Anna Maria Perrone, in Italian, who is wife, main chef, and waiter all in one. Shortly, she returns with a bowl of fava puree with strands of chicory in the middle. “It’s the oldest dish in Puglia.” I look at it with interest but don’t have the foggiest idea how to eat it. She giggles and takes my fork to wind the strings of chicory like spaghetti, using the puree as the sauce. She pops a forkful into my mouth before wandering back to her small kitchen.

I continue the drive south from Lecce, heading to the southernmost cape of the peninsula, where the Adriatic and Ionian seas meet. The beaches are even more striking than farther north, stretches of crisp white sand and turquoise water with sailboats drifting lazily in the coves. Norman castles mingle with Byzantine churches perched over the water, Art Deco villas nestle into the rock, surrounded by cool pines and deserted, crumbling farmhouses. Among the small ports, Otranto has become a popular resort, with every rock and stretch of pier taken over by sunning Italian bodies.
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