Puglia (also sometimes called Apulia in English) is a large region, stretched out long from north to south, with several distinct cultural identities.
The southernmost is the Salento, where a language related to Sicilian is spoken, and the region also includes several areas which speak a variety of Greek. This is the land of endless olive groves and white cliffs at the edge of a brilliant blue ocean, where Magna Graecia still seems close to living memory. The Salentini proudly consider themselves inhabitants of a semi-autonomous region separate from the rest of Puglia, the descendants of the Messapians and Byzantines.
The Giro touches on the Salento region in Alberobello, famous for its peculiar conical houses called trulli, indigenous to the region but often believed to be a remnant of Messapian or Illyrian architectural styles. They are constructed using "dry stone" technique (muro a secco), an ancient method of stonemasonry that does not use any type of mortar or cement to lock the stones in place - they are simply fitted carefully together and balanced under their own weight. The presumably Messapian innovation was building pseudo-domes out of drystone, and the resulting trulli are a unique structure seen only in the Salento.
The trulli are decorated with symbols painted in chalk on the conical stone domes. Some are of esoteric medieval Christian origin, others are connected to paganism and shamanic traditions of the region. Like Calabria, Puglia never fully turned away from its Hellenic pagan roots, and many a grandmother still knows old folk magic to protect her family from the evil eye. This is la terra del rimorso, where the cathartic pizzica tarantella dance was born out of Dionysian rites as a folk cure for the crippling catatonic depression - tarantismo - that can afflict any living human being but in Salento manifests as the delirium of the poisonous bite of a spider. The cure is the arrival of the band, the insistent rhythm of the tamburrieddhu drums, and the trance-like dancing and uninhibited motion that gets the "poison" - be it literal or psychological - out of the system.
Traveling north, the next stop in the Giro is the town of Molfetta, part of the Metropolitan City of Bari.
Puglia is divided in two - the south is Hellenic and Baroque (please, all two of you reading this, go to Lecce someday and just wander around the old town looking at buildings) and the north is Norman. The Normans arrived in southern Italy in the early 11th century and enjoyed a period of prosperity, power and trade before all being sacked by the French four hundred years later.
Norman architecture is solid and stoic. The cathedral in Molfetta is plain stone walls and pristine lines, geometric proportions and a minimalist aesthetic. A Norman town looks like a fortress and a monument. The critic Mario Sansone once described Bari as a city senza ironia e senza malinconia, with neither irony nor melancholy. (Arguably the two cornerstones of the Salentino mentality.) Bari and the Baresi are straightforward, plain-spoken, steadfast.
North still, the last stop of the Giro in Puglia is Peschici, in the forests of Gargano near Foggia.
If Italy is a boot, Gargano is its spur. This small promontory is heavily forested and home to the Gargano National Park, among the largest national parks in Italy, rich in caves and a natural preserve for what remains of the ancient Foresta Umbra that once covered a vast territory across the peninsula.
An archeological mystery from the zone around Peschici: the triplice cinta sacra, a sort of "magic square" (literally "sacred triple belt") carved into stone walls of churches and earlier religious locations. The symbol appears across Europe in ancient Druidic or pagan sites, and is often believed to represent the position of man relative to the divine or the centrality of God, depending on who you ask. Serious archaeologists will admit that they have no idea what it means but that no symbol is drawn by accident, and its frequency in sacred locations across the centuries suggests a certain esoteric significance.
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