12. Italy: Puglia - Taranto, Gallipoli and Solento

En route from Sicily to Puglia we had an overnight stay at the town of Pizzo on the west coast of Italy. It would have been idyllic if it had not been so chilly, windy and wet.

Our next stop was to be a two night stay in a hill top town called Bernalda, near Matera.  It is the traditional family seat of Frances Ford Coppola and had benefitted from much largesse from his family to encourage tourism, jobs and infrastructure. Worth a look we thought.
Bad idea!
We found our accommodation a goodly way out of town and on inspection of the room noted that the "bedroom" was exactly the same dimensions as the double bed (think about that) and the shower was over the toilet (think about that one, too). We had to walk through a very deep puddle to actually get to the room; the pool was closed but they might open it for a 40 Euro consideration for an hour if we said exactly which hour we wanted it and because there was nothing in the "room" to sit on we could use a chair in the "breakfast room" which was actually a plastic tent.
We left!
We checked out the rest of the town and didn't hang around there either.  Paul is now in "discussions" with bookings.com to get a refund - but we're not hopeful.

So we drove on to Taranto, our next booking and rang the host to enquire if he could take us for 3 nights instead of one. Of course he could if we could wait for 2 hours for him to drive into town from his home about 50 km away.  This turned out to be a great solution as Taranto was fascinating and our apartment was in the absolute centre - 100 metres from everything of interest.  The apartment was an old family home - the best type of accommodation you can find: big rooms, solid fittings, good equipment, absolutely every single item you could need and provided with generosity. In this case the generosity included fresh strawberries, fresh fruit, yoghurt, coffee, milk, breakfast pastries and chocolates.

Taranto has a great castle managed by the navy because Taranto is a major naval base being in the middle of southern Italy and centred on the Ionian Sea in the Gulf of Taranto.

Taranto is also the gateway to the Salento Peninsula, which is the southern half of Puglia. In ancient times there were significant Greek settlements around Taranto and the area is referred to as Magna Grecia (part of Greater Greece).

Th ancient Greeks were active traders throughout the Agean from 1650 BC to 1050 BC (600 years) and had multiple trading settlements throughout the Gulf of Taranto area.  The National Archaeological Museum of Taranto is ones of the most important in Italy and has a a wonderful display of Greek artefacts.

The Greeks traded wheel-made ceramics, ornaments, jewellery, glass, ivory, precious oils and essences, olive oil and wine.

This is a pair of gold earrings, in perfect condition and 3,700 years old.

Glass bowls, 3,600 years old and the one on the left is intact.

This was called the Nutcracker, in ebony and brass.

And vases with the most detailed illustrations.

Our next stop was Gallipoli, where the ancient city is on an island, connected to the mainland by a short bridge garded by a castle.

The castle at Gallipoli was very interesting.

And the walk around the old city walls revealed some beach ...

... and lots of rocks.
We then drove south down the rather boring west coast of the Salento Peninsular and rounded the very tip.

The drive north up the east coast of the peninsula was much more interesting and there were lots of coves and little rocky bays like this one. You wouldn't be able to see the ground for bodies in summer, but we are still struggling for some sunshine.

Next up - golden Lecce.

11. Sicily: Baroque Noto

"Eight towns in south-eastern Sicily - Caltagirone, Catania, Miletello val de Catania, Modica, Noto, Palazzoio Aereide, Ragusa and Scicli - were rebuilt after 1693 on or beside towns existing before the great earthquake of that year. The reconstruction of these towns represents a considerable collective undertaking accomplished successfully and with a uniformly high architectural and artistic standard. While adhering to the late Baroque style of the day, these towns depict distinctive innovation in urban planning and construction." UNESCO Citation for the Late Baroque Cities of the Val di Noto.

Noto, one of these eight UNESCO-protected masterpieces of town planning is just 30 minutes southwest of Syracusa. As is the case across so much of the region, the original town was home in turn to the Ancient Greeks, Romans, Normans and Arabs before falling to the Christians in 1091 AD. When the medieval village was completely levelled by the terrible earthquake, it was rebuilt from scratch on a new site about 10km from the old centre.

Under the supervision of the Duke of Camastra on behalf of the then Spanish Viceroy, three celebrated Sicilian architects Labisi, Sinatra and Gagliardi created a new town based firmly on late Baroque ideals.
The idea was to create a linear, perfectly proportioned urban centre whose parallel lines would provide myriad panoramas. The town was divided into three parts by three roads running from east to west, thus ensuring maximum sun. At the top lived the nobility, in the middle the clergy, and at the bottom the hoi polloi (mid 17th century: Greek, literally ‘the many’) Our tiny apartment is definitely with the hoi polloi.

The principal building material was local compacted limestone, a substance that they say absorbs the sun’s rays and transforms them into a soft golden-honeyed glow. Of course the public buildings have fared better than the private ones in terms of conservation.

The main thoroughfare is Corso Vittorio Emanuele along which many of Noto’s most beautiful buildings stand.

It begins at the Porta Reale (above) and extends east via three piazzas each with its own church.

It includes the inspired Palazzo Ducrezio, now the town hall.

The Cathedral, the dome of which collapsed in 1996,

which might have influenced the very plain or unadorned most recent renovation.

The interior has quite a 'modern' look for such an old cathedral.

It has several modern pieces.

The Church of San Francesco is also on the main street.

As is this lovely fountain, the name of which escaped me,

And the Palazzo Nicolaci di Villadorata,

which had a wonderfully painted ballroom 

and a fabulous courtyard perfumed by a most luxuriant chinese star jasmine.

A colourful Ape.

Neither Paul nor I are great pizza fans, but dinner last night at this pizzeria called The Garden of Santa Chiara was excellent.  Pizza in Sicily is different from what we find in Australia; almost always cooked in wood-fired ovens, more crusty around the edges and with much better quality ingredients - real buffalo mozzarella, fresh tomato sauce, juicy whole olives, generous serves of prosciutto (or whatever you have selected) - and for me, it is possible to have the pizza baked plain with fresh cheese, fresh tomatoes and lots of herbs added (raw) at the end.

No pizza tonight, though.  We ate at the Cantina Modica, in Via Nicolaci, directly opposite the Palazzo Nicolaci di Villadorata,

And yes, the wine was excellent as were my sardines and the caponata.

It was so mild (compared to the weather of the last two weeks) that we braved an outside table. It is 9.30 pm but the LED street lights make it very pleasant.

Our charming waitress.

There is much heritage about this place. It had an amazing array of old familyphotographs from the mid 19thC to the 1950's as well as this wall of old wine bottles.

10. Sicily: From Montalbano to Marzamemi

Are you an Inspector Montalbano fan?

I am. I was hooked 20 years ago after seeing the first couple of episodes on TV and borrowed all of the books by Sicilian author Andrea Camilleri from the library. There have been 12 seasons of Commissario Montalbano, the first in 1999 and the twelfth, last year in 2018 but in total only 32 episodes have been made in that time.

I especially liked the episodes from around 2008 with Livia, Salvo's fly-in, fly-out girlfriend who lived in Genoa.  The show is still in production with two episodes being made each year.

We visited Punta Seca in 2017 and saw them filming - here's the link if you'd like to have a look at Montalbano's house.

This time we have revisited beautiful Baroque Scicli where the town hall is Montalbano's police headquarters.

Most of the buildings in the piazza have been used in the series for one purpose or another.

The building on the right with the green sign is Montalbano's pharmacy.  It is actually a pharmacy museum with all of the trappings of an olde worlde apothecary.

One of Salvo's cafes is at the end of the street.

And here is one of many fabulous Baroque palazzos featured in the series. The elaborately tiled and painted rooms in these magnificent buildings are so large they almost swallow up the furniture and indeed, the inhabitants too.  The elaborate wrought iron upper balconies on the Baroque buildings are generous and beautifully curved.

The television series has done much to raise the profile (and the economy) of this south-eastern area of Sicily. We keep tripping over all types of Montalbano focussed offerings for tourists,.  They range from the expected bus and bicycle tours of the filming locations to a newer idea that seems to be drawing a large following - the crime tour.
In Scicli, we came across a group of about 40+ people of all ages and probably nationalities, wearing black and yellow t-shirts branded 'Crime Game'. They were divided into teams and given clipboards of clues to follow to solve a 'whodunnit'. Some groups were on foot, others on bicycles. After several hours they re-assembled in the outdoor pizza restaurant in the upper piazza and each team added their information to a big crime scene board, just like the detectives do in the television shows.  One team wins but we weren't close enough to see just how that was determined, but all the punters seemed happy with the outcome.

From Scicli we move down to the coast to a lovely little B&B right on the water in Pozzallo.  We had hoped that it would be swimming weather - indeed, Paul has been swimming in April in previous years - but alas, not this year.

The wind was still blowing and the beach was deserted.

Pozzallo is the port for the Sicily- Malta ferries.  That is the port on the horizon with the cranes. The boats themselves are about the same size as the Queenscliff-Sorrento ferries and the 82 kilometre crossing takes around 90 minutes and traverses the very busy main shipping lines through the Mediterranean. By comparison the 10 km crossing of Port Phillip Bay takes 40 minutes.

Our current stop is just a few kilometres up the coast from Italy's southern-most point, the pretty seaside village of Marzamemi.

It was the Arabs of the 10th century who put Marzamemi on the map.

They not only gave the village its poetic name (something like Turtle Dove Bay) but also built the original tonnara (above) a tuna processing plant which was to become one of the most important on the island.

Although the tonnara (chimney and outbuildings above) is no longer operating, Marzamemi continues artisanal fishing and processing activities, producing delicacies including canned tuna, dried tuna roe (bottarga), smoked swordfish, marinated anchovies, seafood pasta condiments, tuna salamis and more.  We tasted these goodies in the old building whose roof appears above, but didn't buy - an acquired taste.

The old centre of the village, most of which dates back to the mid-18th century, is situated on a little promontory and organised around the extremely picturesque Piazza Regina Margherita (previous photos).

On the south side is the little fishing harbour with its bobbing fleet of colourful wooden boats.

The sun was wonderful once we found a spot out of the wind for coffee. The seating is hi-tech pallet design.

Checking out the lunch menu.

He can't resist the water - even for just a paddle.