Nearby

You can happily spend a relaxed week exploring Ostuni on foot, enjoying its strange mix of architectural styles and sampling the delights of its many cafes, bars and restaurants.
Closer to Ostuni are some delightful small hill towns (Ceglie Messapica, Carovigno) with beautiful old buildings in their centres - do not be put off by the ugly high-rise structures around their perimeters. If you persist you will find fantastic treasures beyond these cement monstrosities: park in the modern areas and walk to the centro storico where the streets are often very narrow and difficult to negotiate with a car.
If you want the ultimate hands-on safari experience, a visit to Zoosafari, in Fasano, is the must-do family outing. Remember to bring nuts for the monkey train and breadsticks for the camels and giraffes. This is Italy and the animals are there for feeding.
Perhaps most interesting is Alberobello, famous for its thousands of trulli - the world famous circular stone houses with cone-shaped roofs made of dry stones (without cement!). These fascinating buildings are dotted all over the countryside round Ostuni and look like hobbit houses. There is even a trullo church.
Not far from Alberobello are the Grotte di Castellana, the amazing underground caves and passages full of magical stalagmites and stalagtites. Don't be put off by the touristy shops and long queues in summer months - the caves are spectacular and worth a wait.
Also worth a visit is Cisternino, with its delightful centro storico, and Locorotondo, built in a circular formation, hence its name, where streets spiral up to a magnificent church which can be seen for miles around. In the modern area, the local cantina sociale, a vast wine factory, sells the very good local wine. Best is the white wine, which costs about 8 euros for 5 litres.
In July and August all these small towns have their own festivals, when thousands of people descend on them to see the decorated streets and sample the local food until the early hours of the morning. Martina Franca, another town not far from Ostuni, holds an international arts festival every year in late July/early August - if you want tickets you need to go online to www.euro-festival.net and look for the Festival della Valle d'Itria. You would need to book some months ahead: they stage little known operas which get booked up early.