How far is Martina Franca from the houses?

From Cisternino it is 12 km, a quarter of an hour. From Ostuni it is about 25 km, half an hour by car. Locorotondo is 6 km away and Alberobello 15 km.

When is the Festival della Valle d’Itria?

From mid July to early August, with performances in the courtyard of the Ducal Palace. The programme is published in spring; book online a few weeks ahead for the main operas.

Yes, on Wednesday mornings, one of the largest in the area, with produce, cheese and cured meat as well as everything else. It is worth a morning if you are cooking at the house.

The valleyTown

Martina Franca

Martina Franca is the largest town in Valle d’Itria and its most elegant: a baroque old town of pale stone, wrought-iron balconies and carved doorways, laid out around the Basilica of San Martino and the Ducal Palace. Every summer it hosts the Festival della Valle d’Itria, one of Italy’s best opera festivals, in the palace courtyard.

The baroque town

Where Ostuni and Cisternino are white lime, Martina Franca is honey-coloured stone. Enter through Porta Santo Stefano, the baroque gate on the main square, and you are in the Ducal Palace’s courtyard, then in Piazza Plebiscito with the curved façade of San Martino filling one side of it. From there the lanes run off in all directions, and every second doorway has a carved frame, a balcony of black iron, or a little shrine set into the wall. It is a town to walk slowly in the evening, when the stone glows and the passeggiata fills the corso.

The festival

The Festival della Valle d’Itria has run every summer since 1975, staging opera in the open courtyard of the Ducal Palace from the middle of July to the beginning of August. It specialises in rare works and belcanto, sung under the stars to an audience that has come from across Europe. Tickets are not hard to find if you book a few weeks ahead, and an evening there, with dinner in the old town afterwards, is the valley at its most civilised.

Capocollo and the woods

Martina Franca is a town of butchers and cured meat, and its capocollo, pork neck cured with wine and smoked over oak and almond shells, is protected as a Slow Food presidium. Buy it at the counter in the old town. West of the town, the Bosco delle Pianelle is a reserve of oak forest on the edge of the plateau, cooler than the valley by several degrees, with paths for a morning walk.

Good to know

How far is Martina Franca from the houses?: From Cisternino it is 12 km, a quarter of an hour. From Ostuni it is about 25 km, half an hour by car. Locorotondo is 6 km away and Alberobello 15 km.
When is the Festival della Valle d’Itria?: From mid July to early August, with performances in the courtyard of the Ducal Palace. The programme is published in spring; book online a few weeks ahead for the main operas.
Is there a market?: Yes, on Wednesday mornings, one of the largest in the area, with produce, cheese and cured meat as well as everything else. It is worth a morning if you are cooking at the house.

Alberobello

Read