Martina Franca · Cisternino · Locorotondo · Alberobello · Castellana Grotte · Fasano · Ostuni · Carovigno · TA · BR · BA
A journey that descends: from the edge of the southern Murgia, where Martina Franca looks over the Valle d'Itria, down to the rocks of Torre Guaceto. It rests on a trace from 2015, four routes of the regional map-guide (today not confirmed) that pass the baton from Martina Franca to Carovigno; the chain is ours. The historical thread is thin, but it is there: the dukes of Martina reappear at Locorotondo and at Alberobello, and Ostuni and Carovigno preserve Aragonese walls. Alberobello and Castellana Grotte lie outside those routes: they are declared detours. It is for those who travel slowly and read the dates on the walls.
At a glance
Duration. 5 days.
The route
Day 1 — Martina Franca
Martina Franca stands at 431 metres, on the highest step of the southern Murgia overlooking the Valle d'Itria: this is how the Ministry of Culture's record for the historic centre places it. The foundation in the 10th century by exiles from Taranto, the record warns, is a tradition without archaeological confirmation. The documents begin later: a notarial deed of 1260 names a “locum castri Martine”, and in 1310 Philip of Anjou, Prince of Taranto, refounded the casale with privileges for the new inhabitants; from then on the record registers the name Franca Martina. The walls, documented with certainty only from 1335, enclosed four nuclei; after the lordship of the Orsini the town was demesnial in 1507, then a duchy of the Caracciolo. The face one crosses today bears dates between the 17th and 19th centuries: the Palazzo Ducale of 1668, the civic tower of 1734, San Domenico of 1760, the hemicycle of piazza Maria Immacolata of 1854. The record calls this style Martina baroque, more sober than the Salento one, and among its sources cites Blaeu's Atlas Maior, of 1665. The dukes of Martina will return in the following days.
Day 2 — Cisternino and Locorotondo
At Cisternino the record in the Ministry's Catalogue reports that the town is said to have been born through the work of the Basilian monks and gives the name they are said to have given the place, Cis-sturnium, “this side of Sturnium”, that is, of Ostuni: it is an explanation of the name, not a document. More solid is what lies beneath the Romanesque church of San Nicola, where a small Christian temple of about the year 1000 was discovered; from the 11th century the town follows the fortunes of Monopoli. The oldest fortification is the Torre Grande, quadrangular, which the record cautiously attributes to Norman workmen or to Frederick II. The association of the Borghi più belli d'Italia (page read on 2026-11-07) cites a Norman-Swabian tower 17 metres high and dates the little church of the Madonna d'Ibernia to around 1100 and the oldest masserie to the 15th-16th centuries.
Locorotondo has lighter sources, almost only from the Touring Club. The concentric lanes give the settlement its circular shape; the low whitewashed houses with pointed roofs are called cummerse, the trulli here casedde. The first reference to the settlement is from the late 11th century; in the 15th century it was in the principality of Taranto, two centuries later it belonged to the dukes of Martina. The Matrice di San Giorgio was built, according to the Borghi più belli d'Italia (page read on 2026-11-07), between 1790 and 1825. Tomorrow we leave the thread of the map-guide.
Day 3 — Alberobello and Castellana Grotte (detour)
In 1481, writes the Ministry's record for Alberobello, Ferdinand of Aragon granted this territory, then wooded, to Andrea Matteo Acquaviva, who settled about forty families from Noci there. The reason for building dry lies in a rule: under Gian Girolamo II d'Acquaviva one had to build without mortar, so that the houses could be dismantled and the “Pragmatica Baronibus”, the tax owed to the Kingdom for new settlements, evaded. In 1644, after a denunciation by Duke Caracciolo of Martina Franca, an inspection arrived, and the inhabitants dismantled their houses so that the village would seem uninhabited. The fief ended in 1797, when Ferdinand IV, at the request of the citizens, raised Alberobello to a royal town. The Monti quarter counts over a thousand trulli, the Aia Piccola about four hundred; the UNESCO inscription dates from 1996.
Castellana Grotte enters the journey for what lies beneath it: for the history of the town we found no open sources. The entrance is the Grave, a doline that popular legends, the website of the Grotte reports, linked to the souls of suicides. A descent is documented on 21 December 1800; on 23 January 1938 the speleologist Franco Anelli, called in by the Province of Bari, went down into the Grave and found the Caverna dei Monumenti; two days later he went down with Vito Matarrese, a worker from Castellana, who in 1939 discovered the Grotta Bianca. Tomorrow we head back towards the sea.
Day 4 — Egnazia and Fasano
We begin on the Via Traiana, which crosses the archaeological park of Egnazia. For the Ministry of Culture's page the site has been inhabited since the 16th century BC, has been a Messapian centre since the end of the 6th century BC, then a municipium, and owed its importance to the port and the road. In the park one can read the Civil Basilica with the hall of the Three Graces, the cryptoporticus, the episcopal basilica with the baptistery. The lower part was abandoned from the 6th century AD, the acropolis remained inhabited until the 13th. The museum stands in the Messapian necropolis; among the finds, a set of Mycenaean pottery of the 14th century BC from Torre Santa Sabina, in the territory of Carovigno, where the journey will end. Fasano was born, for the Catalogue record, from a casale, Santa Maria de Fajano, under construction in 1088, and in the 14th century was a fief of the Knights of Malta. On 2 June 1678 the people of Fasano defeated the Turks, with an apparition of the Madonna according to the chronicles; the victory is remembered every year with the Scamiciata, at the feast of the patron saints, and with a plaque at the entrance to the historic centre. Tomorrow the Murgia ends.
Day 5 — Ostuni, Carovigno and Torre Guaceto
Ostuni stands on a hill with steep sides, on the last strip of the southern Murgia, highest point at 229 metres, and at the top, writes the Catalogue record, it holds the bishop's palace and the cathedral. The castle grows from the 11th century, and the Aragonese circuit of the late 15th century is still substantially intact, with eight surviving towers out of fifteen. From the early 18th century the defences gradually lost their function; outside the walls lie the outer quarters. The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta was begun in 1435, probably by Bishop Arpone; the central rose window arranges 24 small columns around the blessing Christ. The oldest detail is in contrada Risieddi: according to the preistoriainitalia.it portal, in the cave of Santa Maria di Agnano the burial of a woman of about twenty in the eighth month of pregnancy, from the Upper Palaeolithic, with a headdress of over six hundred shells, was discovered on 24 October 1991. They call her Delia, and according to the same portal she is in the Museo delle Civiltà Preclassiche della Murgia Meridionale. The last stretch of the map-guide, “Dai colli al mare”, leads to Carovigno, which for the Ministry's record stands on the Messapian settlement of Carbina, sacked by the Tarentines and destroyed in 473 BC; there remain the Aragonese circuit and the Dentice di Frasso castle, of the 14th-15th century; the fief passed to that family in 1792. The sea is Torre Guaceto, which the italia.it portal says was inhabited from the 2nd millennium BC and in Roman times was a landing place and a centre for the production and export of amphorae. The journey, in our proposal, ends here.
DRAFT of 2026-11-08 · local only · gate run: PASSES WITH CORRECTIONS, 13 defects corrected · not approved