Brindisi BR

Brindisi only became a province in 1927, carved out of Terra d'Otranto, the historic province that covered the heel of Italy. It is the northern end of the Salento peninsula: twenty towns between the Adriatic shore and the borders with Taranto and Lecce. The province spent most of the twentieth century known for its port and its factories, and the last thirty years turning towards services and tourism.

Ostuni is the image most people arrive with: a hilltop town of lime-washed houses that you can see from the road long before you reach it, known simply as the White City. Cisternino and Ceglie Messapica hold the hills behind it, Fasano runs down to the coast, and inland Mesagne and Oria keep castles and old centres that few visitors expect. Brindisi itself is still the harbour where the ferries leave for Greece.