PUGLIA AND MATERA Mediaeval to Baroque art and the picturesque scenery of the Salento coast

The south of Italy is still largely, and unjustly, unknown. Come with us as we explore the sun-drenched region of Puglia, from Trani south into the Salento, the tip of the heel of the Italian boot, a land rich in history, full of treasures of art and architecture. Our journey will, in some senses, have a companion: Frederick II, king of Sicily and southern Italy as well as Holy Roman Emperor (1194-1250), who built many of the spectacular sites we will visit. Our first base will be Trani, where Frederick built the city's castle and prayed in its magnificent cathedral. From there we will make a visit to see Frederick's most magnificent castle and residence, Castel del Monte, one of the jewels of the thirteenth century. Our path next takes us out of Puglia and into neighbouring Basilicata, across the “murgia” or plain to Matera, one of the oldest cities in the western world, with continuous human habitation from the late Paleolithic era onward, with its fascinating “Sassi” or dwellings cut out of the rock of the ravine that defines one of the city's edges. Then we make a visit to Bari, capital of Puglia, with another castle built by Frederick, to pay our respects to St Nicholas in his great basilica before moving south to Lecce, our second base of exploration. We will begin with Lecce itself, with its astonishing Baroque decoration, but the Salento area has more to show us, from Otranto with its twelfth-century mosaic floor and its streets running down the hill to the sea, to the landscape of the interior, where Frederick II went hawking, and Gallipoli where we will walk along the edge of the Ionian Sea. Our visit ends with a trip to the Puglian town of Martina Franca with its characteristic trulli or conical domed buildings, and all through our journey we will be sampling the variety of food and wine that come from this most extraordinary and unexpected region.