Ceglie Messapica: The Puglia Town Most Travellers Drive Past on the Way to Alberobello

Puglia tends to arrive in your imagination as a postcard: the trulli of Alberobello, the whitewashed hilltop towns, the olive trees stretching in every direction. Riccardo Cervi, who knows central and southern Apulia intimately, has a different picture in mind. It includes two coastlines, ancient festivals, and a longer list of places most visitors never reach. We asked him for his honest take on the region.

Riccardo lives in Puglia and advises travellers through The Voyage Co.

A Sense of Puglia

Riccardo does not describe Puglia like a brochure. He describes it the way he lives in it: a region with two coasts, dozens of small centres, and a food culture that resists being reduced to one dish.

Q. How would you describe Apulia to a friend, in one sentence?

This region has it all: great climate, beautiful small city centres, two coasts of clear sea, true wild natural beaches or the finest beach clubs, amazing traditional food, olive oil and wine, traditional festivals, and the most serene countryside surrounded by ancient olive trees.

Q. That's not a modest description. Is the region living up to it now?

Puglia is one of Italy's largest regions. It is starting to grow in popularity, but it remains one of the country's most underestimated places. Most people still anchor their imagination to a few towns. The reality is far wider than that.

Q. What do you wish people understood before they arrived?

That you are coming to a region, not a single landscape. The Itria Valley with its trulli is one part. The Adriatic coast around Monopoli and Polignano is another. The Salento further south is a third. The countryside around Ceglie Messapica is a fourth. Visitors who treat Puglia as a list of three towns leave thinking they have seen it. They have not.

Where do locals actually send their friends in Puglia?

We asked Riccardo about the town he sends friends to, and the famous one he thinks travellers misuse.

Q. What's one place travellers often miss, but absolutely shouldn't?

Ceglie Messapica. Most travellers come to Puglia and anchor their route around Alberobello, Ostuni, and Polignano a Mare. Those are good hubs for seeing most of the region. But Ceglie Messapica sits in the Itria Valley not far from any of them, and it stays off the main tourist circuit almost entirely.

Q. What does Ceglie Messapica give you that the famous towns don't?

The local spirit is still intact. The historic centre is small and walkable, the food culture is serious in a way that locals notice (it has a real reputation in southern Puglia for its cooking), and the rhythm of the town has not been built around visitors. You eat where local families eat. You drink where local families drink. You sit in a piazza that empties at lunch because everyone has gone home.

Q. And what would you call overrated?

Alberobello. The trulli houses that have made this town world-famous are genuinely remarkable to see, and I am not suggesting you skip them entirely. But the experience of visiting Alberobello has been shaped more by tourism than by genuine local life. There are far quieter, more authentic versions of what Puglia can offer a short drive away.

Q. So how would you handle Alberobello, practically?

Spend a day or two there. If you want to splurge, sleep a couple of nights in a traditional trullo, which is its own kind of experience. But do not base your entire trip around it. Use it as a stop, not as a centre of gravity. Then move into the smaller towns of the Itria Valley, where the same landscape opens up without the crowds.

How to Spend 48 Hours in Puglia

Riccardo's weekend plan is built around the Itria Valley and a single stretch of the Adriatic. Short distances, deliberate stops, a coastal nature reserve.

Q. If someone only had 48 hours in your region, what would you tell them to prioritise?

Ostuni, Ceglie, Monopoli, Polignano a Mare, and Locorotondo for the towns, and Torre Guaceto for the coast. That selection covers the Itria Valley and the Adriatic, which means the region's most distinctive inland landscape and its most accessible stretch of sea, in two days.

Q. What does day one look like in your itinerary?

Start in Ostuni for the white-walled centre and the views over the olive plains, then drive down into the valley to Ceglie Messapica for lunch. Spend the afternoon in Locorotondo. The town sits on a hill and the historic centre is one of the most quietly beautiful in Puglia. Finish the day in Alberobello at dusk, when the day-trippers have left and the trulli district is much quieter.

Q. And day two?

I would send you to the coast. Monopoli first, for the old port and the small beaches inside the historic centre. Polignano a Mare next, for the famous cliffs and the view down to Lama Monachile. Then Torre Guaceto in the afternoon, a protected marine reserve where the Adriatic looks the way it should: clear water, low scrub, and very little development.

Q. The mistake you see most often?

Travellers anchor to one town and drive out from it for day trips. That works in some regions. In Puglia it costs you the rhythm. The Itria Valley is small enough that you can move between towns without losing your day to the car, and the experience changes if you let the landscape carry you between stops instead of returning to the same base each night.

When to Come to Puglia

One month is the right answer. The reasoning is practical.

Q. What's the best time of year to visit Puglia?

September. Without hesitation. You find great temperatures of air and sea water, with fewer tourists around. The summer is long here and the warmth holds well into autumn. September keeps that warmth while the crowds have already started to leave.

Q. And the months you would steer travellers away from?

August in particular. Puglia's beaches draw enormous numbers of Italian and European visitors that month, and the coast can feel saturated. The inland towns are quieter than the coast in August, but the heat is heavy and many of the smaller restaurants run on reduced hours because the staff have taken their own holidays. If you only have August, you can still have a good trip. But September is the month I would book first.

Q. What about earlier in the year?

May and June are excellent for the inland towns, the countryside, and the food festivals that mark the start of the season. The sea is still cool but warming, and the olive groves are at their best. April can be lovely too, but the weather is less predictable. If you want guaranteed warmth, late spring or early autumn are the windows that consistently work.

What to Eat and Drink in Puglia

Riccardo refused to name one dish. In Puglia, that is not an evasion, it is an accurate description of a food culture built around fresh pasta, vegetables, dairy, and olive oil.

Q. What's a local food every visitor must try?

It would be a long list. Puglia has a food culture built around fresh pasta, orecchiette, burrata, seafood from both coasts, grilled vegetables, and some of the best olive oil in Italy. Reducing it to one dish would miss the point.

Q. If a traveller has only three meals in Puglia, what should they look for?

Orecchiette with cime di rapa, properly made, in a small trattoria. Burrata from Andria, served at room temperature with good bread and olive oil. And one seafood meal on the Adriatic, preferably raw, which here means crudo di mare: oysters, sea urchins, prawns, eaten with a glass of cold white wine.

Q. And the regional wines?

Primitivo from around Manduria, Negroamaro from the Salento, and Susumaniello from the smaller producers around Brindisi. White wines are quietly serious too, especially Verdeca and Bianco d'Alessano from the Valle d'Itria. Drink local. The bottles you order ten minutes from the vineyard will outperform the famous names every time.

Q. Where should travellers eat?

Not on the main square of the famous towns. Walk three or four streets in any direction and the quality goes up and the price comes down. Ceglie Messapica is a good example. Some of the most respected restaurants in southern Puglia are there, but the town is not on the main coach route, so the prices stay sensible and the rooms stay full of local families.

Riccardo's Puglia is not the one you arrive imagining. It is the quieter one, the one that opens up once you stop driving in straight lines between famous names. Skip a coach tour. Pick a base in the Itria Valley. Eat where the locals eat. Come in September. Find it once, and the postcard version stops feeling like enough.

Explore more Puglia-specific insights to plan your next trip with locals.