Destination... The territory

Puglia is a fascinating land, rich of sun and life, surrounded by a pure clean sea, an abundance of products known around the world: olives, grapes, fruit, vegetables.

Favored by its geographical location, almost the geometric centre of the Mediterranean, Apulia has been in contact throughout the centuries with diverse people from different cultures and civilizations.

Therefore qualifying element: be meeting point between East and West, but also, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the territory of comparison and a clash of two worlds divided, the Romanesque-Germanic and the East-Byzantine. The classical civilizations that spread by providing opportunities for cultural exchanges and merchant ships. They all came to Apulia: the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, the Normans, the Swabians, then the French, the Spanish and, lastly, with the Bourbons.

The turn taking of the dominant peoples with the autocratic authorities (Kings, princes, barons) carried in the souls of the Puglian people an addiction to accept the life with a crafty and undiscerning air but with great commitment to work and desire for a better future. Naturally the invaders not only paid attention to taking away goods and people, but enriched the territory through organization, with coastal defenses, building towers, important roads such as l'Appia and the Traiana, castels and abbeys new communities entrusted to the jurisdiction of Counts and Barons.

They were born in this context, the popular songs of love, and daily lives of nostalgia, and evend dances such as the "pizzica" they accompanied the moments of celebration, a just parenthesis of the long periods of working in the fields, in the workshops and fishing at sea. This is a small contribution to explain the character of the people of the South.

In recent years with the inclusion of the territory Trulli, caves and sea into numerous tourist guides and with the regions participation in a numer of European projects it tends to revitalise all aspects of society. The South is not behind, it exists, listens and welcomes, it filters the big news and makes itself known.

As a conclusion to a short text that is that of the right scenery: the olive in fact, the symbol of the region.

"It has always charmed the olive chiseled as a sculpture, twisted as if in pain, quiet, humble and massive, rich with strength and meekness, modest in shades of colour and of bloom. Justly the olive may represent the earth and the people of the South furrowed by fatigue, in its appearance dry but crossed by tenderness and unpredictable vitality".

To all of us, Pugliesi and tourists the events are intertwined with lives of common people, of the brigands and the lords of the past, are a story which may be useful when you want company. When the tire of Surfing in the world of virtual reality you will gladly accept the fragments of life from the past, the images of visited landspaces...Trulli, caves, Sea.

It is our beautiful South beautiful in every season.