Puglia: Italy's stylish new hideaway

Annabel Rivkin joins the fashion set in Puglia, Italy's stylish new hideaway
Chic shores: Monopoli in Puglia
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Annabel Rivkin3 September 2015

Puglia: part car park, part poetry. Part agricultural flatland, part trulli-studded settlement. Also, suddenly fashionable. Or, at least, the stylish summer secret is now bellowed across cyberspace thanks to Instagram. It seems that everyone was there this summer — from supermodels and superwriters to superdesigners and Hollywood superstars — swerving the well-trodden charm of Tuscany to experience the rawer allure of the south of Italy, deep in the boot. They were all there, but — here’s the killer thing — no one bumped into each other. Because there is no hub. No Club 55 à la St Tropez. No El Chiringuito como en Ibiza.

A civilised 45-minute drive from Bari airport, through winding dry-stone-wall-lined lanes, past nipple-topped huts and ancient olive groves, sits Masseria Monopoli, a private, newly invigorated villa. White stone around a cobbled courtyard. Satisfying in its spacious luxury. Fresh and beautiful with a particular USP: most large and expensive rentals have a killer master bedroom, one other reasonable bedroom and then a load of cells. Masseria Monopoli has eight equally splendid rooms and an Airstream at the bottom of the garden.

The pool at Masseria Monopoli

You can eat by the pool, on the roof, in the courtyard (with a movie projected on to a solid white wall and steaming pizza emerging from the wood-fired oven), in the airy dining room or on a terrace overlooking the olive groves. The staff are warm and friendly. The pool is an extraordinary turquoise and slopes like the gentlest shore. Amid the elegant linen and stone appointment, it is superlatively child-friendly: a trampoline dug into the ground and netted; a grass mound shaped like a tortoise for rolling down; baskets of inflatables; chic little wooden tables and chairs, even kittens for goodness’ sake. Oh, and there is a tiny, private chapel. Just in case.

And while Masseria Monopoli is in the middle of nowhere, it is also in the middle of everywhere. The town of Monopoli — five minutes away — is utterly Italian with an unexpectedly ravishing church and picturesque port. Elegant little piazzas for a cocktail, a gelato (morello cherry: sounds repellent, is celestial) and some viciously fattening antipasti. Stalls hawking cheap and delicious pistachios and crunchy, biscuity taralli rings. A terrible weekly market that sells — among the tat — really rather cool, vast knickers for €1 a shot.

Courgettes drying

But there are other markets well worth a trawl — most notably the antiques and odds and sods trove that springs up in Martina Franca on the third Sunday of every month. Four of us went. One bought a tortoiseshell clutch bag and an A-line, lace-collared, linen shirt — for peanuts. Another bought a difficult 19th-century pot that looks like a naïve Picasso (this purchaser is a picky aesthete). The third artfully stumbled upon a stash of pleasantly bashed monochrome tiles — enough for a bathroom — for about a quarter of what they might cost in a more metropolitan European town. And the last shopper stumbled across two pink ceramic angels, as charming as they were cheap. There were glasses and paintings and many, many pots and platters, and sculptures ranging from the rustic to the patrician to the eye-poppingly kitsch.

Down the road in the ancient picturesque white town of Locorotondo, the Friday morning market is an excuse to tramp the cobbled streets, but there are also — among the bath mats and batteries — stalls piled with vintage linen and groaning with wheels of delicate trimmings. As well as more big pants. Despite the touristy tea towels I heard not a word of English.

If you want a taste of the tourist trail, then head to the Grotte di Castellana where the queues are testament to the wonder of the vast complex of underground caves a-glitter with stalactites, stalagmites, crystals and alabaster. At odd moments sunlight breaks through the rocky roofs like the gaze of God. But the wait is long and the tour is chilly. Less subterranean but equally Disney is the hobbit town of Alberobello, which is studded with surreal little limestone trulli. But frankly there are plenty of these conical dwellings peppered along every road.

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And when we weren’t sunbathing and paddling and shopping and snoozing, we ate. Oh boy, did we eat. Hearty orecchiette with fresh tomatoes and piquant basil, sea bass baked in salt, unbelievable tiramisu (very slightly salty, not at all boozy), squishy mozzarella, courgettes soaked in vinegar and dried in the glare of the sun, and pecorino dipped in local honey. We fattened up within the thick white walls of the Masseria Monopoli, where the melons and the figs came straight from the gardens.

A beautiful place infused with the as yet unyielding spirit of Puglia. Go now. It’s only a matter of time before the snazzy beach clubs spring up, and the waiters speak English, and all — or at least some — is lost.

DETAILS

A bespoke trip to Masseria Monopoli in Puglia can be organised throuh Bellini Travel (bellinitravel.com)

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