Villas in Monopoli

The harbour is the centre of the town. Wooden gozzi painted red and blue sit against the wall below the sixteenth-century castle, and the fishing fleet still works out of it. Behind that, the old quarter is a grid of whitewashed lanes opening onto Piazza Garibaldi, with the cathedral and its tall campanile a few streets in.

The town’s defining story is the Madonna della Madia. In 1117 a raft of wooden beams carrying an icon of the Madonna drifted into the harbour; the beams finished the roof of the cathedral, and the icon has presided over its altar ever since. The fishermen still paint their boats in her red and blue, and the arrival is re-enacted twice a year, on 14 August and 16 December, when a replica raft is brought in to Cala Batteria, beside the castle, after dark among illuminated fishing boats. The August landing is worth arranging an evening around.

What distinguishes Monopoli is the coast either side of it. There are dozens of small coves within a short drive, from Cala Porta Vecchia under the old town walls and the sand at Porto Bianco and Porto Rosso to the rock inlets further south, and they stay usable well past the middle of the day because there are enough of them to spread out along.

South of the centre the cove of Porto Ghiacciolo sits directly beneath the eleventh-century Abbey of Santo Stefano, its water kept cold by fresh currents even in high summer, before the coast opens into the sand and lidos of Capitolo. Fifteen minutes further on, the ruins of Egnazia, a Messapian and then Roman city on the Via Traiana, spread between the sea and a good archaeological museum.

The town has more of an everyday rhythm than Polignano a Mare, ten minutes north, and it is a straightforward base for the whole northern coast. The Valle d’Itria is about thirty-five minutes inland, and Ostuni roughly the same distance south.