The 19 best things to do in Puglia
Puglia, the beach-fringed heel of Italy's boot, offers lazy sun-drenched days and long limoncello lunches, leading ineffably to an afternoon nap. Holidays here are punctuated by flavoursome fresh food and ancient olive trees, architecture left by waves of invaders, and boat trips along the coast.
This is a place to wander through pine forests on the way to the beach, take a passeggiata around golden-stone piazzas, discover lime-white hilltop towns, or visit a fortified cathedral. Its sights are reminders of its richer past, when lamps were fuelled by olive oil and pirates roamed the coast.
All our recommendations below have been hand selected and tested by our resident destination expert to help you discover the best things to do in Puglia. Find out more below, or for more Puglia inspiration, see our guides to the region's best hotels, restaurants, bars and beaches.
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Best for families
Alberobello
Wander a storybook town of trulli
The best-known site in Puglia is this Unesco-listed, hobbit-like town. Puglia has distinctive cone-roofed trulli dotting its countryside – whitewashed limestone houses with witches-hat drystone roofs. Rolling off the tongue, and meaning 'beautiful tree', Alberobello is the only place there is an entire town of these. It's the most popular tourist spot in the entire region, with coachloads of visitors stopping by on whirlwind tours of Europe.
Insider tip: Touristy it might be, but Alberobello is still a fantastical place, especially if you get off the main drag and into the backstreets. Get here early in the morning or stay overnight to see the town at its most atmospheric.
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Times
10 hours ago
- Times
A week on the Amalfi Coast in August for £532pp? Here's how
With its Mediterranean sunsets, beach clubs and exquisite gelati, Sorrento is a delight in August. Hot sunny days in the early 30s are perfect for exploring more of Amalfi's coastline on boat trips to surrounding islands or for swimming in the town's natural cove and snorkelling in the nearby Punta Campanella Marine Reserve. There are also plenty of easily reached historic sites and a lively old town full of restaurants for alfresco lunches on days off the water. Prices soar in August's peak season, but the Amalfi Coast can still be affordable if you stay just outside Sorrento's centre at the Hotel Villa Igea Sorrento. Seven nights' B&B, including flights from Stansted with Ryanair, costs £532pp with Thomas Cook, departing on August 27, or you can upgrade to half-board for an extra £212pp for the week. A small under-seat bag is included or check in a 20kg suitcase for an additional £75 return. Naples airport is about an hour from Sorrento and taxis cost at least £80, but an hourly bus runs to Sorrento's railway station (£11; where you can take the same company's blue or orange line bus to Capo di Sorrento, right outside the hotel (£1). The three-star hotel overlooks the Bay of Naples and has a smart white marble lobby and 60 bright, buttercup-yellow rooms with tiled floors and traditional carved wooden beds. Some have sea views. There's a seasonal outdoor pool, an all-day snack bar and a restaurant serving dinner. It's a 40-minute walk to the centre of Sorrento but there's also a free shuttle bus. • Read our full guide Amalfi The turquoise natural pool at Bagni Regina Giovanna, on the site of a ruined 1st-century Roman villa, is a 15-minute stroll from the hotel. The town's main beach, Spiaggia di Sorrento, is a five-minute drive and lined with beach clubs providing loungers and plenty of Aperol. In Sorrento's old town, stroll the main square, Piazza Tasso, then wander the cobbled side streets to stock up on leather gloves, limoncello and hand-painted ceramics. Pop into the 11th-century Basilica di Sant'Antonino, home to the tomb of Sorrento's patron saint, and ogle the elaborate frescoes at the 15th-century Palazzo Sedil Dominova (both free entry). The nearby Museo Correale di Terranova houses a vast art collection donated by a noble Neapolitan family, including Roman artefacts discovered in the town itself (£13; Afterwards, people-watch over seafood pasta on the patio at Da Gigino (mains from £7; Via degli Archi) then finish with artisan ice cream at Fresco Sorrento (cones from £2; • 23 of the best things to do on the Amalfi coast The Unesco-listed ancient Roman city of Pompeii (from £15 entry; is 40 minutes away by train (£21 return; while ferries to the island of Capri run regularly from Sorrento's Marina Piccola port (£36 return; You can visit the best snorkelling sites at the protected marine reserve on a boat trip with a marine biologist on board (£50; • Return Stansted-Naples flights, departing on August 27• Seven nights' B&B at Hotel Villa Igea ( If you're inspired to visit Sorrento and have more to spend, you could try… This article contains affiliate links that can earn us revenue Perfectly placed for day trips, Hotel Michelangelo is two minutes' walk from Sorrento's railway station on the main shopping street, Corso Italia. The salmon-pink four-star property is built around a 16th-century tower and has an outdoor swimming pool, a bar with live piano music and a roof terrace with views of the Bay of Naples. A restaurant serves dishes from the Sorrentine Peninsula and has a patio overlooking the pool. Simply decorated rooms feature terracotta-tiled floors, floor-to-ceiling windows and pale blue soft furnishings. Most have balconies and one recently renovated modern suite has its own hot tub. Details Seven nights' B&B from £1,000pp, including flights ( • 25 of the best hotels on the Amalfi coast It's all about the views at the four-star Grand Hotel President which looks out over the Bay of Naples, Mount Vesuvius and the Sorrento coast from its hilltop perch. A glass-walled cocktail bar, rooftop sun terrace, outdoor pool and main restaurant all make the most of the panoramic location. There's also a small fitness centre and spa with Turkish bath and whirlpool, while flower-filled gardens are ideal for sunset strolls. Rooms have ornate Vietri-style tiling, inlaid wooden furniture and warm touches of peach, lemon and sea-blue. The centre of Sorrento is two miles away and a free shuttle service is provided. Details Seven nights' B&B from £1,438pp, including flights and hold luggage ( • The in-the-know Amalfi coastal spots that don't cost the earth
Times
11 hours ago
- Times
This pervasive dining trend is set to wreck my summer holiday
I've just spent three marvellous days in Greece — sun, sea and some great friends, with whom I relished sharing precious downtime. I did not enjoy sharing my taramasalata. Each mealtime our group of six gather would around the same table — either at the hotel where we were staying or in local restaurants. As friends travelling together, of course we did. It was with a sinking heart, however, that I quickly realised we were to share our meals too, thanks to the pervasive — and frankly unwelcome — trend for 'sharing plates'. My joy at perusing each mealtime menu was tempered by the near certainty that my choice would not just be for me, but for all of us. A choice, no doubt, that my dining companions would instantly find more alluring than theirs, and which would fast disappear before my eyes, leaving me to dip into a selection of confusing and dissatisfying alternative mismatched 'bites'. The phrase 'for the table' has become the mantra of those with short-term tastebuds but is the curse of the single-minded diner; the gustatory deficit disorder that plagues our palate in the same way that the smartphone meddles with our minds. The culture of sharing plates is no longer limited to restaurants that specialise in suitable dishes — tapas, for example, or thali, where one can at least expect compatible flavours. In fact it's just one iteration of a wider trend for communal dining, a term applied to a range of set-ups, from disparate diners sharing food and tables, to restaurant guests sitting around a communal table eating individual à la carte orders. It is a veritable buffet of culinary experiences. That said, I can just about cope with starters 'for the table', when I can program my brain to accept dipping in and out of different dishes — I think of it as seated canapés. And puddings, well, I'll rarely have more than a spoonful anyway and it's often off my husband's plate. But main courses? If Iberico pork was meant to be eaten with vegetable biryani, it would come as a menu suggestion, not as carelessly deposited spoonfuls of incongruous flavours rattling around my dinner plate. Even worse, is the expectation that diners share elbow room with complete strangers along trestle tables, now common in even the most traditional of tavernas. It's all very lovely in theory. Meals out, whether on holiday or not, are often a celebratory, convivial affair. Why not share the love — and your food — with other people? Psychologists point to communal eating as a way to connect and to support mental health — the 2025 World Happiness Report ranks shared meals as one of the greatest factors in wellbeing, on a par with income and employment status. Research published in the journal of Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology suggests that social meals stimulate endorphins and are vital to connection with other people — a time when you are more likely to open up, swap stories and discuss ideas. This may well be true, but surely this doesn't mean being forced to sit with a group of strangers and pay for the dubious pleasure? Because, please, the conversation I most want to have over the rare treat of a meal out in an equally rare moment of downtime is with my husband or friend, not small talk with someone I don't know. The sceptic in me wonders if this is a case of providence disguised as preference — after all, those hotels and restaurants that offer it are not just benefiting from the economy of space (more customers per square metre) but from the novelty value too. A straw poll of my fellow Greece guests revealed that, unlike me, most were in favour of the sharing plate, although there was less enthusiasm for communal tables. Nearly all said that they would prefer to dine with their chosen companions than be seated with strangers. So who is it that is feeding this pernicious trend? • 16 of the best quiet Greek islands Back in the London office, I'm surrounded by 'people people' who proclaim to love a shared table. 'It's a study in psychology and I love it!' says one such minded colleague. 'Watching marital breakdown over a schnitzel is my favourite pastime,' she adds. 'I can always spot the signs.' (I too can spot said signs, but prefer to do so from at least a table's distance. Still, each to their own.) There are places, I acknowledge — beyond the family meal or domestic dinner party — where it works, by and large, where every diner eats the same menu, at the same time, and often has a shared experience too. Take, for example, a safari. Here, it's essential. How else can you effectively download the wonder of your game drives and those of your fellow campers? (Or, if you're unlucky with your cohort, trade information on house prices in London, Suffolk and the Cotswolds?) Similarly, communal dining has long been a customary part of the cruise ship experience, particularly river cruises, and is something passengers are almost uniformly enthusiastic about. Here, forewarned is forearmed, and with a greater pool of people to play with (or avoid) there are ways for even the uninitiated to enhance their experience. These are, I'm reliably informed: get to dinner five minutes before the restaurant opens to occupy a seat that's near the window with a view. Prime positioning is important because you may find that people want to sit in the same place every night, but remember, it's first come, first seated. If your first night found you alongside international-level competitive travel bores intent on proving that they've been to more places than you, you are going to want to know your table rights for the next night. But, Wendy Atkin-Smith, the managing director of Viking UK, says, such lengths are rarely required, and in fact these tables are where lifelong friends are made on board. 'Our river ships offer a very intimate experience and our guests all get to know each other very quickly,' she says. 'Our communal tables are very popular and are definitely part of the whole river voyage experience — we don't have any kind of fixed seating so guests are at liberty to move around each evening to meet fellow travellers in a very relaxed and convivial setting.' But what of hotel restaurants — those rarefied centres of intimacy, of romantic dinners, of illicit encounters, and of well-deserved quality family time. Why would they want to mix it up with one big table of potentially gastronomic and social discord? Well, it turns out they are often bringing people together around a shared experience too. For some, it's nothing new. Stuart Smith, the brand home manager at Glenmorangie House, a farmhouse-turned-boutique hotel for visitors to the distillery, says communal dining has been at the heart of its Highland hospitality for 30 years. 'Our dinner party format fosters a uniquely warm and convivial atmosphere,' he says. 'We've even seen groups who first met around our table continue to reunite here every few years, a testament to the enduring bonds formed in this special setting.' Others are doing it to create connections with the past. Flore, the restaurant at De l'Europe in Amsterdam which reopened in April after a makeover, has created a communal table crafted from a single elm felled not far from the hotel. 'It creates a connection between guests and the city's natural heritage,' says chef Bas van Kranen. 'Seating has been designed to allow solo diners, couples, groups of four, and larger parties to all sit together around the same table. The communal table experience pairs diners randomly, they don't get to choose their seat — we find that this breaks down the traditional barriers of fine dining in a way that brings people together rather than isolating them.' At Killiehuntly Farmhouse in the Cairngorms, part of the Wildland conservation network, guests in the main house begin their day together over bowls of porridge with cream and fresh berries at a long, scrubbed farmhouse table. At Lundies House, 120 miles further north in Lairg, dinner is more refined, but no less social. Here communal dining is not a gimmick but a way of life, Ruth Kramer, the head of design at Wildland, says. 'In an era of individualism, there's something quietly radical about sitting down with strangers to eat a meal. It's a gentle return to something older and simpler: the table as a place of welcome, nourishment and unexpected connection.' So I guess if, like me, you don't want an unexpected connection that goes beyond the food, then research before you reserve. Leave the trestle tables and the small plates for the more caring, sharing diners out there, and raise your glass to a summer of enjoying your own dish from the comfort of your own table. Do you enjoy communal dining or would you rather eat alone? Let us know in the comments below
Times
11 hours ago
- Times
I've found the simple, tried-and-tested solution to overtourism
The water pistols are back. On Sunday a wave of co-ordinated anti-mass tourism protests took place across southern Europe, from Lisbon to Venice via Palma de Mallorca. The Barcelona marches saw several hundred turn out. Flares were thrown into hotel lobbies. A hostel was taped off like a crime scene. Tourist or not, if you happened to be sitting at a café terrace in the Spanish city's Gothic Quarter that day, you had a high chance of getting spritzed. It's hard to argue with the demonstrators' points. Tourism, particularly the proliferation of short-term lets such as Airbnbs, is pushing up rents, exacerbating the housing crisis and forcing locals out of their own neighbourhoods. It is also changing the character of some of Europe's most magnificent cities. Historic restaurants and family-owned businesses are vanishing; in their place emerge yet more gaudy fast-food chains, bubble tea shops and vape stores. If that's your vibe, you may as well spend the weekend walking up and down Oxford Street. Much needs to change, clearly, but the emphasis hasn't always been in the right place. Mitigation tactics appear to come in one of two forms: either a) curbing visitor numbers through headline-making policies such as tourist taxes, limiting cruise ship arrivals or even a complete ban on short-term rentals, which Barcelona plans to enforce from 2028; or b) suggesting travellers try 'destination dupe' alternatives instead (Catalan neighbour Girona is the go-to when it comes to Barca-alikes, which I'm sure they love there). But I'm not convinced tourists are going to stop wanting to visit these cities in significant numbers. They are popular for a reason — the art! The architecture! The mini beers and salty snacks! — and shouting or graffitiing 'go home' or 'go elsewhere' is unlikely to work. So here is my proposal: send them to the suburbs. One city that is trying to pre-empt and stave off overtourism is the small but increasingly popular Ghent, whose tourist board is promoting what it calls 'spreading' — trying to distribute visitors throughout the city rather than having them concentrated in the historic centre. As anyone who's visited Ghent will know, it's a good 40-minute walk from the main train station to the city's central attractions, so it would make complete sense that more visitors stay overnight throughout this vast urban stretch instead of just the medieval core, which is what most tourists do (especially considering the city's impressive cycling infrastructure). The scheme is encouraging tourists to spend more time in less visited areas such as Dampoort, and wants more hotels to open city-wide. • 16 of the world's most underrated cities To take the example of an already overtouristed city, I can vouch for staying beyond Paris's Boulevard Périphérique. The suburb of Pantin, where I lived for six months (mainly because of the low rent), has all the edge of other northeastern areas within the ring road (the star turns being a host of canalside bars, dance theatre the Centre National de la Danse and the charming independent cinema Ciné 104). But you also get the sense of staying somewhere a lot more authentically French. Who needs the Pompidou Centre when you've got a massive hypermarché on your doorstep? For some cities, such as Barcelona, where tourism has reached such excessive levels that even the suburbs are sick of visitors, this might not be appropriate. But I have a back-up solution: commute. Faced with absurd hotel and Airbnb rates over Valentine's Day, I gave this a go in comparably overrun Amsterdam. We ended up in someone's garage in a seaside town called Zandvoort. The daily 20-minute train ride through a national park and Haarlem was gorgeous, and in the evenings we felt like the only Brits in town, doing our bit for the local economy at a time of year when it sees little custom. Similarly, this weekend, I'm off to a hotel in the mountains outside Alicante in Spain, and plan to pop into the city for tapas and a museum visit or two. I won't take it personally if they spritz me. What are your favourite city suburbs to stay in? Let us know in the comments
