Martina Franca: Baroque, Music and Capocollo in the Heart of the Valley
Martina Franca is the most elegant of the towns of the Valle d’Itria. Where Cisternino is rural and intimate and Ostuni majestic and open to the sea, Martina is urban and refined, with a late Baroque old town that ranks among the finest in southern Italy. Once a town of nobles and brigands, today it is known for three things: its architecture, its music and its capocollo.
The Baroque old town
The best way into the old town is through the Arco di Santo Stefano, the main gateway to the historic centre. From there you reach Piazza Plebiscito, the heart of Martina, overlooked by the Palazzo Ducale, now home to the Town Hall. Built at the end of the seventeenth century, the Palazzo Ducale marked the beginning of Martina’s Baroque with its ornate façades, carved balconies and frescoed interior halls. It can be visited free of charge during Town Hall opening hours.
From Piazza Plebiscito the streets of the old town fan out, a succession of Baroque façades, carved stone doorways, richly decorated churches and noble palaces. The Basilica di San Martino, with its tall, theatrical façade, is the most important church. The Chiesa del Carmine, with its majolica-tiled dome, is another jewel. But the beauty of Martina is that the Baroque is not confined to a single monument: it is everywhere, in every doorway and on every balcony.
The old town is lively too: shops, artisan workshops, pastry shops and cafés with tables on the little squares. Martina is a real town, not a museum village, and that gives it a different energy from the other towns of the Valley. On the third Sunday of every month the old town hosts a large antiques market.
The Valle d’Itria Festival
Every summer, between July and August, the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale becomes an open-air theatre for the Festival della Valle d’Itria, an international opera festival founded in 1975. The festival is known for rediscovering rare and forgotten works of the Italian and European repertoire, and draws enthusiasts from all over the world. If your stay coincides with the festival, seeing a performance in the palace courtyard is an extraordinary experience.
Capocollo and local cuisine
Capocollo di Martina Franca is a cured, smoked pork cold cut, smoked over fragno oak bark and recognised as a Slow Food Presidium. You will find it in the butchers’ and delicatessens of the town centre, and its intense, lightly smoky flavour is unlike any other Italian capocollo.
Martina’s cuisine is rich and varied: orecchiette, bombette (stuffed meat rolls), gnummeredd, local cheeses, focacce. The trattorie of the old town serve traditional dishes in elegant but unpretentious surroundings.
Getting there
Martina Franca is about 55 kilometres (50 minutes) from Brindisi airport and about 75 kilometres (an hour and a quarter) from Bari airport. It has a railway station on the Ferrovie del Sud Est line with connections to Bari and Taranto. For parking, the most convenient areas are Via Paisiello and around the Villa Comunale, from where the old town is a few minutes’ walk away.
Where to stay near Martina Franca: our trulli
Four TrulliOnLine properties lie in the countryside around Martina, all five to six kilometres from the centre.
Trullo Meraviglie is a seven-cone complex, carefully restored, in a strategic position at the crossroads of the three provinces of Bari, Brindisi and Taranto. Reclaimed-wood furnishings, a pool with a pergola and sunsets over the countryside. Sleeps up to eight guests. A few hundred metres away is Trullo di Marella, a seven-cone trullo with a country house, generous outdoor spaces, a pool and a large masonry table for dinners under the stars. Sleeps up to nine guests, perfect for big gatherings.
Trullo degli Asinelli, five kilometres from the centre and twenty from the sea, sleeps up to seven people. Trullo Santala is a detached trullo with a pool on one of the highest points of the Valle d’Itria, with breathtaking views. Sleeps up to five guests, 35 minutes from both the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea.
Martina Franca and the Valle d’Itria
Martina Franca sits at the geographic centre of the Valley. Locorotondo is ten minutes away, Cisternino ten minutes, Alberobello twenty, Ostuni twenty-five, Ceglie Messapica a quarter of an hour. It is the ideal base for anyone who wants to explore the whole valley with a town offering every service and an active cultural life as a point of reference.
