How far is Locorotondo from Ostuni and Cisternino?

From Cisternino it is 8 km, ten minutes. From Ostuni it is about 25 km, half an hour. Martina Franca is 6 km south and Alberobello 9 km north, so the three towns make a natural day.

Where is the best view?

From the Villa Comunale, the public garden on the eastern edge of the old town, which looks out over the whole valley towards Cisternino. Go at the end of the afternoon, when the light comes across the trulli from behind you.

The feast of San Rocco is on 16 August, with the town lit up in luminarie and a fireworks display over the valley that people drive from all over Puglia to see. Book dinner early that week.

The valleyTown

Locorotondo

Locorotondo is a round white town on a hill in the middle of Valle d’Itria, its streets laid in rings around the mother church. It is known for its cummerse, narrow houses with steep pitched roofs of limestone slabs, for the view from its public garden across the valley, and for the dry white wine that carries its name.

The round town

The name says it: the old town is a circle, and its streets follow the curve. Walk the outer ring first, along the edge where the houses look down over the valley, then cut in towards the church of San Giorgio, whose dome is the one thing that rises above the roofs. Everything is white, everything is spotless, and the flowers on the balconies are tended like a competition, which they are. The town has been named among Italy’s most beautiful villages, and unlike some of them it is still lived in on every floor.

The cummerse

What makes Locorotondo look different from the other white towns is its roofs. Instead of flat terraces or trulli cones, the houses in the old town have cummerse: steep double-pitched roofs covered in chiancarelle, the same thin limestone slabs that clad a trullo. From the valley they look like a row of grey slate gables set over white walls, a town that seems to have been built somewhere further north and carried here.

The wine

The slopes around the town grow Verdeca and Bianco d’Alessano, and Locorotondo DOC is the dry, pale, faintly bitter white that comes from them. It is the wine to drink cold with the valley’s cheese and raw vegetables. The cooperative cellar at the edge of town and a number of small estates in the countryside sell at the door; ask at the house and we will point you to the ones we drink.

Good to know

How far is Locorotondo from Ostuni and Cisternino?: From Cisternino it is 8 km, ten minutes. From Ostuni it is about 25 km, half an hour. Martina Franca is 6 km south and Alberobello 9 km north, so the three towns make a natural day.
Where is the best view?: From the Villa Comunale, the public garden on the eastern edge of the old town, which looks out over the whole valley towards Cisternino. Go at the end of the afternoon, when the light comes across the trulli from behind you.
When is the feast?: The feast of San Rocco is on 16 August, with the town lit up in luminarie and a fireworks display over the valley that people drive from all over Puglia to see. Book dinner early that week.

Martina Franca

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