finalmente, apulia.

Leaving Matera behind (sigh), on our way into Apulia (or Puglia, to us Americans), we stopped in the actual middle of nowhere at the area's most spectacular rupestrian church, the Crypt of Original Sin (so-called due to a depiction inside of the fall of Adam and Eve). This thing was only officially "discovered" in 1963--naturally enough, by members of the same organization that revitalized Matera--at which time the cave was being used as a shepherds' shelter. This place contains a cycle of Benedictine frescoes from the 8th or 9th century, and the unknown artist has been nicknamed the Flower Painter, due to the abundance of red poppy-like flowers all throughout the frescoes. Naturally, no photos allowed, but you can find plenty on teh Interwebs.

The crypt hangs on the edge of this ravine, which is spanned by a railroad bridge that actually connects to nothing. (The thing definitely stands out in this rather flat, pastoral landscape.)

Funnily enough, the landowners are the keepers of the crypt, but their primary business is winemaking. One has to stop at the winery to visit the crypt, and who can turn down a free tasting on the way back out? Not us, that's for sure. We snacked on taralli and local cheese and sampled their beverages, which feature a fresco from the crypt on the label. (And yes, before you ask: we did, in fact, bring home a few bottles of their really tasty white.)

In the winery's entry hall, there's a reproduction of the Madonna figure from the crypt. Look, I'm sure it was the style--or maybe even symbolic of something--at the time these things were created, but those buck teeth are really unfortunate.

While Matera had been my number-one destination in southeastern Italy, trulli country was a close second. The oldest trulli in Puglia probably date to the 16th century, but many are much newer. Legend has it that, originally, these buildings were meant to be temporary, so that they could be quickly dismantled in order to avoid taxes by visiting Neapolitan landlords, but most likely, their stacked-stone walls and roofs were a matter of practicality in this climate: warm in the summer, cool in the winter. Behold, the amazing and fantastical trullo!

LITTLE CONE-TOPPED HOBBIT HOUSES. That's what they are. There are thousands of these things, both free-standing and dotted across the landscape...

...and clustered particularly thickly in the town of Alberobello.

Gah, so adorable.

The symbols painted on the roofs generally have either religious or astrological meaning.

Alberobello even has a trullo church.

As I said, these things are all over the countryside, in varying states of repair, and plenty are for sale (want, want, want). What's entertaining about that is that they're listed by how many cones they have.

Hee.

After sweating our faces off in Alberobello* (and having lunch in a trullo restaurant, as one does), we decided to go sweat somewhere else, and headed for the gorgeous, quiet little hilltop town of Locorotondo. (Look, I don't know how people get the stereotypical far-away shots unless they're parked on the side of the highway or tromping through someone's fields, and I wasn't willing to do either, so here's what it looks like on the approach.)

Naturally, the view from the park at the entrance to old town is fairly expansive.

From what we could tell, the historic center of Locorotondo is small and entirely pedestrianized, and consists entirely of the most picturesque little winding cobbled alleys.

Apparently, this type of pointed gabled roof (which looks pretty standard to an American...) is specific to Locorotondo. (Most other buildings in the area are flat-roofed or are trulli!)

Just. Too. Pretty. (And positively rife with flower-covered balconies.)

A little baroque for ya.

I am quite aware that I am a city mouse, and could not possibly survive in such a wee little quiet place, but Locorotondo tugged at my heartstrings. It was just so peaceful and beautiful and charming, and even a little breezy and shady, in that ridiculous heat! But we had our next B&B to find, so we headed down the hill and into Fasano, another tiny-but-charming place that was ideally situated for visiting all of the places I planned to sight-see. Dinner that night was at La Locanda di Martume, a darling little place in the center.

We started with this, a glorious local-meats-and-cheeses platter (that's capocollo, smoked pork, Val d'Itria salame, pecorino fresco,  mozzarella, ricotta topped with almonds, and caciocavallo), followed by pasta with eggplant, tomatoes, pesto, and pancetta for Mike, and orecchiette with zucchini-mint pesto and tomatoes for me. 

I feel a little bad that we spent 3 nights in Fasano, but didn't really see the town itself. There's some pretty stuff there!

The next day, after coffee and pastries from a cafe down the street from our B&B (that was the "breakfast" part, and so lovely!), we headed towards Ostuni, another stunning hilltop city.

In the lower, newer part of town, we found the column of St. Oronzo, the city's patron saint (who, according to tradition, saved the city from the plague in 1740), right next to the base of a 15th- or 16th-century Aragonese guard tower.  

Also stopped in to see the archaeological museum, which is in a church.

Among vast collections of pot sherds, they also have a few prehistoric skeletons; this one is from roughly 26,000 BC.

In the upper city is the Scoppa arch from 1750, which connects the bishop's palace to the seminary palace...

...right in front of the cathedral, the current form of which dates to the end of the 15th century.

This thing is lined all the way across the front and around at least part of each side (from what was visible, anyway) with about a jillion little unique carved faces. Unreal.

Inside, there's nothing terribly exciting, except that the nave is way misaligned from the choir. (And I could find neither an explanation for that, nor even a mention of it, anywhere. Mystery abounds!)

View of olive trees and the Adriatic from near the cathedral.

Ostuni's another one with narrow pedestrian streets and ridiculously lovely whitewashed buildings.

Too pretty.

We stopped for lunch at Osteria del Tempo Perso, which, it turns out, is in a cave. (Yessss.) They brought us a small amuse bouche of baccala and eggplant fritters, and then Mike had a bowl of wheat berries topped with cheese sauce and black truffle, followed by prawn and tomato pasta. I went for the roasted octopus with chickpea puree, and we shared a bowl of almond gelato with dried figs and San Marzano liqueur. (The rest of the food was great, but that dessert was otherworldly good.)

Next, we decided to poke around Martina Franca for a bit, and what a lovely, lovely place.  My only regret was that we parked in a space with an hour time limit. Needed more time there. (That place would be my HQ next time, since it's a slightly bigger city, and appears to be quite friendly and bustley.)

Outside the walled city (in the regular city), we found absolutely tons of lights set up. (No idea whether this was for anything special, or if Martina Franca is just always like this.)

Once we found our way inside the city walls to the historic center (yes, yet another walled hilltop gem), one of the first things we stumbled across was the opera society...

...which was holding a rehearsal of Monteverdi's Altri Canti d'Amor right then and there. Apparently, it was in preparation for Martina Franca's annual opera festival, which is held in the (outdoor) cloisters of the baroque San Domenico church. Where they were practicing, complete with staging, orchestra, and even a couple of people singing from the second-story balcony. Most remarkable, however, was how entirely normal that group of people looked, and yet how genuinely incredible all of their voices were. (Especially this one rather diminutive guy who looked like he could be Ken Jeong's brother, and had this massive baritone that could knock one's socks off.) (No photos/video were allowed inside, but they said nothing about recording from just outside the door, ha HAH!)

Ahem. Moving on. One of the more unique piazzas we've seen, Piazza Plebiscito/Maria Immacolata. That crazy curved building runs all the way around behind us, to the right.

Baroque face.

Martina Franca is just beautiful. Mostly-pedestrian, cobbled streets; white buildings with a splash of color here and there; all manner of intriguing alleyways and tunnels-through-buildings...

...some amazing baroque touches here and there...

...and a few incredible views (oh, hey, Locorotondo). Want to go back.

Dinner that night was at the rather upscale Il Fagiano, up the hill from Fasano in the selva (a fancier community in the woods--it reminded me of Carmel a little bit!). The place looked like it was set up for a wedding reception--matching flowers on all the tables, a long (empty) buffet table in the corner, plenty of nice silver and elegant tablecloths--and it was, except that the wedding partiers didn't arrive until well after 10:00 PM, and so we were the only people in the joint (well, also with a really awful American family, unfortunately, to whom we tried our best to provide a quiet, polite counterpoint) for an hour or two. However. We had an unexpectedly grand feast there, and really lovely service. We finally broke down and ordered the appetizer sampler to share--keeping in mind that most other samplers we'd seen were, at most, 5 dishes--and ended up with no fewer than eleven plates of starters on our table. There were puff pastry with pate; riso venere with fonduta; pecorino with tomato jam; prosciutto crudo; tomato focaccia; quail eggs with black truffle; eggplant mousse with tomato sauce; octopus with zucchini; seared tuna; marinated salmon; and marinated shrimps. Everything was good, although we just about killed ourselves on appetizers alone. Thankfully, we'd both had the foresight to only order pastas after that (although, frankly, at that point, they were entirely unnecessary, but too late...!), and Mike had a really excellent cacio e pepe, and I had some whole-grain casarecce with caramelized radicchio, tomatoes, and caciocavallo. No dessert, of course (no room, sadly), but we did get a free shot of limoncello in the deal. Mmmmmm.

Well. I kinda thought I'd be able to fit the rest of the trip into one post, but as I always end up using way more photos than planned, I'll close this one here. With that meal. Sigh.

Up next: the wedding itself; a couple more unbelievably pretty southern Italian towns (yes, it's all really gorgeous); and the journey home.

*Did I mention that the average daytime temperature down there, everywhere we went, every day, was about 35 C/95 F? I'm a summertime girl, for sure, but there have been few occasions in my adult life where I have sweat like that.