Nardò and its marinas within the 10 best places for holiday makers in Italy

Once again Nardò has been listed at the 7th place of the Blue Guide, the most popular voice about the best beaches and places in Italy. Blu Guide is produced by Touring Club Italia and Legambiente, the leading environmental organisation in Italy formed by 20 regional committees and more than 2000 local groups. Legambiente runs national and international campaigns aimed at reducing traffic and air pollution, pesticides use, or proposing new energy policy, enhancing use of renewable sources, energy efficiency and conservation etc.
Nardò and its marinas (Santa Maria al Bagno, Santa Caterina, Sant’Isidoro and Portoselvaggio) for the third year have gained the “5 Blue Sails” reaching a special place in the list and becoming more popular for their environment and their hospitality. Legambiente also gives the opportunity to discover small villages and local traditions of Italy, protected and promoted by “Piccola Grande Italia” (Small Big Italy) campaign, which aims to increase the value of our great heritage – environment, cultural property, local typical products and traditions – cherished in small Italian towns, the irreplaceable defence grounds of the Italian identity. The campaign has already involved 500 towns with less than 5 thousands inhabitants, mountain and provincial communities. http://www.legambiente.eu/documenti/2009/0528_guidablu/index.php

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Buying in Puglia, Italy

Article from http://www.uktv.co.uk/ where www.sispropertyandtourism.co.uk has been featured. It also has provided the properties for the show.


Puglia makes up the ‘heel of the boot’ in southern Italy. It has two distinct coastlines, high cliffs of the Adriatic to the east and the low-lying rocky shore of the Ionian Sea to the west. Italian families have holidayed here for years and it’s not surprising. There are 300 days of sunshine a year, beautiful beaches, lovely countryside and fascinating towns and cities steeped in history.

The buyer: Annabel Moorsom
Annabel lives in South London and runs a PA recruitment company. She’s a self-confessed lover of all things Italian and dreams of lazy summers soaking up Mediterranean sun on the west coast of Puglia. She’s drafted in her friend Robert to help her escape busy London for Italian life, food and culture. She has a budget of up to £250,000.

Why Puglia?
With coasts on two sides, Puglia has got fabulous beaches in abundance and an impressive array of rather bijou resorts. Its towns have a modern buzz, but the architecture is a melting pot of Moorish, medieval, Byzantine, Romanesque and Baroque influences, as well as the intriguing trulli – white, cone-shaped houses that were built until the 1800s. Now they’re the region’s hippest holiday homes.Living in Puglia means living the good life. Great food is produced, cooked and eaten locally and nearly every day, the fishermen return to Gallipoli harbour and unload their catch straight into the fish market next door. A trip to buy your lunch is also a great way to meet the locals and catch up on the gossip.With all that fresh produce, Italian cookery courses are hugely popular. You can book a whole course or just take a day’s class. And of course no Italian cookery class starts without the basics – pasta. Top of the bon viveur’s list of things to do in Puglia is watching the sun go down. All along the coast locals and tourists search out a great spot to watch the daily spectacle. Sit in one of the bars up on the walls of the old town in Gallipoli and sip a crisp glass of Frizzantino as you watch the day disappear.

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Italy: Official Tourist Guide

This is the ultimate tourist guide about Italy. Published by ENIT the Italian Tourist Board in UK. It contains all the useful information and contacts you may need before to travel to Italy. SIS Property and Tourism has been featured on it. Please click here to free download the PDF of this important brochure.

SIS Property and Tourism on A Place in Sun – Home or away

On Channel 4 – 31st October 2008 – Series 4: Episode 19

The region of Puglia is divided into the sub-regions of Daunia, Gargano, Tavoliere and Salento. It is then divided into provinces: Foggia, Bari, Taranto, Brindisi and Lecce. So it’s not straightforward to describe a location.

For example, Gallipoli is in the province of Lecce, the sub-region of Salento in the region of Puglia. Puglia makes 80 per cent of Europe’s pasta, 70 per cent of Italy’s olive oil and ten per cent of the European production of wine. Puglia is never more than 30km wide, so you are always close to the seaside.

In 2005, budget airline started flying to Bari and Brindisi, opening up the area to the overseas property market. Property prices are three times cheaper per square foot than Tuscany so it’s still possible to find a bargain.

Santa Caterina di Nardò on the ITALIA the Enit Official Guide



Bookmark

The Ionian Sea
Sunkissed.
A marvellous curve of wild, sunkissed beauty:
more than any other area, the Ionian Sea offers
profoundly close contact with nature. Corners
of unchanging beauty where the vivid colours
of the vegetation alternate with the extraordinary
remains left by the many ancient peoples
who, seduced by the landscape, put down
their roots there: from the Phoenicians to the
Greeks, and from the Normans to the Arabs. A
wreath of small tourist centres overlooking an
enchanted sea, where you can enjoy the relaxing
rise and fall of the waves. Moving towards
the interior, we find the primitive charm of a
natural environment still partly unexplored…
read more on enit website http://www.italiantouristboard.co.uk/

NASA Astronauts ad Nardò Ring in their photo gallery


image credit NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS,and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

The Astronauts put Nardò Ring in their photo gallery considering it one of the 20 most beautiful place in the world seen from the Space. http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery.asp

The Nardo Ring is a striking visual feature from space, and astronauts have photographed it several times. The Ring is a race car test track that is steeply banked to reduce the amount of active steering needed by drivers. The Ring lies in a remote area on the heel of Italy’s “boot,” east of the naval port of Taranto and encompasses a number of active (green) and fallow (brown to dark brown) agricultural fields. In this zone of intensive agriculture, farmers gain access to their fields through the Ring via a series of underpasses. Winding features within the southern section of the Ring appear to be smaller, unused race tracks. Read more on http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1084.html

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The heel of Italy, still wonderfully untrodden by British tourists, is home to some of the country’s finest cuisine and wine. Francisca Kellett report

Puglia, the region comprising the “heel” (and the lower calf) of Italy, has long suffered invasions. Over the past 2,000 years and more, the Greeks, the Romans, the Turks and the Venetians have all rampaged through. But tourists have yet to launch a serious incursion and Puglia remains one of those destinations known only to devotees of Italy.
To the Italians, though, the delights of Puglia are nothing new. They’ve been drawn for decades by the rugged bright-white coastline, its silvery-grey groves of olive and almond trees, and the whitewashed villages of the ancient conical trulli houses.
But the scenery, though pretty, is mostly flat, and not the main draw for tourists; the real reason for coming here is the food and wine. Puglia makes 80 per cent of Italy’s pasta and olive oil; there are bountiful crops of tomatoes, figs, fennel and melon, and mozzarella is made by many local producers. Both the northern plains and the Salentine Peninsula are given over to vineyards, producing particularly good reds from the primitivo grape, and some of Italy’s best modern wines – known as the Super-Puglians.
Despite Puglia’s strong rural feel, it also has a handful of appealing towns worth exploring, such as Lecce, with its extravagant honey-coloured Baroque stonework. The trulli town of Alberobello and the oddly octagonal Castel del Monte are the most popular sights, but even these are free of the crowds found in Tuscany or the Lakes.
While the beaches may not rival those of, say, Sardinia, there are some beautiful stretches that combine well with an inland stay. In the north is the Gargano peninsula, with well-developed sandy beaches, spectacular bright-white cliffs and the dark forests of the Foresta Umbra, popular with hikers and cyclists. Central Puglia has good family beaches, while the bright green coves of the Salentine peninsula have some of the cleanest bathing water in Italy.
Overall it’s not an ideal family destination, but it’s a good place for couples who are happy to split their time between pottering around little towns and basking on a beach. This falls in line with the choice in accommodation – many of the area’s masserias (fortified farm houses) have been converted into smart hotels. They work particularly well for a short, early- or late-season break.
Above all else, Puglia is best-suited to those with a love of all things Italian. This is the place for long lunches, early evening passeggiate (strolls) and drinks watching the comings and goings of fishing boats. Italy’s heel, visitors will find, is still a long way from being well-trodden.
(…)
Southern Puglia
Lecce: It’s difficult not to be impressed by the frivolity of Lecce’s extravagant baroque architecture. A haphazard grid of alleys characterises the centre, where each turn reveals a fresh set of excessive swirls and sculpted façades formed from a honey-coloured stone, which is malleable when quarried but quickly hardens, making it ideal for sculpting. Baroque churches and palazzos abound, but the finest building is the Basilica di Santa Croce, with its decorative stucco and superbly preserved figures.
The Salentine peninsula: South of Lecce is a small stretch of rugged coastline, with few beaches but a handful of seaside towns worth visiting.
Otranto: The old town of Otranto has long spilled beyond its 15th-century walls, but it is the tightly packed centre that remains the main draw. Here, narrow, car-free lanes paved with smooth ivory-coloured stone wind between pockmarked houses. Don’t miss the Romanesque cathedral, with a stunning restored 12th-century mosaic covering the floor. Beyond the thick town walls is a modern seaside resort with a small harbour and palm-lined promenade. There’s a handful of small but clean beaches, surrounded by cliffs dropping into crystal-clear turquoise water.
The coast road: From Otranto, the countryside opens up into fields – hazy with wildflowers and butterflies in June, parched brown in August – before the road heads back along the cliff-lined coast. It passes through a series of tiny settlements, taken over almost entirely by holiday villas. It’s worth pausing briefly in the faded little town of Santa Cesarea Terme, which clings to rocks above a small cove. Have an espresso in Porta D’Oriente; it overlooks a spectacular Moorish villa with a burnt-orange dome and eccentric porticos.
Santa Maria di Leuca: At the southern tip of the peninsula is this lively resort town, with whitewashed houses and a broad promenade busy with strolling families and strutting youngsters. This is one of the few resorts with a beach, although it’s small and narrow, with coarse yellow sand and rocky shallows.
Your move When to go June and September are the best times as the temperature has fallen to the high 20s, the main tourist sights are quiet and the beaches are empty.
(…)
Additional research by Nick Trend.
Read in full the article on Telegraph.co.uk


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Trying Italy’s heel for size

by Kathryn Hone

Source: Timeonline
The extremes of Italy’s southern shores are full of unexpected treasures

THE first time I visited Puglia was by car, travelling the length of Italy in one exhausting July day. After miles of parasols on the bland beaches that flank the Autostrada Adriatica, the road turns inland across a vast plain, the landscape unfurling like a giant map dotted with towns and villages as far as you can see.
On the left, a distant hump denotes the mountainous Gargano peninsula; to the right is a far-off line of hills like a giant’s backbone. The red earth between is cultivated with olive groves and wheatfields.
We were bound for Gallipoli, on the Ionian Sea, inside the heel of the Italian boot. In the long, narrow strip of land that makes up Puglia, the southernmost Salento peninsula is the harshest, rockiest area in the whole impoverished region. It is also the least discovered by the outside world, and has the best swimming, in warm, clear water, that I have found anywhere in Italy.
The Ancient Greeks who created outposts of their empire in ports such as Gallipoli (“beautiful city” in Greek) must have felt at home. The arid limestone landscape of cacti and wild herbs feels like parts of Greece.
Today the old city still has a centre of whitewashed houses dominated by a medieval castle on the harbour. At the foot of the castle walls is a daily fish market, a pungent Aladdin’s cave of stalls selling tuna, swordfish, squid and shellfish. But to reach the old town, especially in the height of the tourist season, you have to negotiate the traffic of the modern town, with its sprawling street market. Half of northern Italy seems to have come south in search of sunshine and seafood.
The debilitating heat means that our children greet ideas of cultural sightseeing with wails of protest, but we manage to coax them to Lecce, 40km (25 miles) away. The walled city is a golden yellow marvel of Baroque architecture and decoration, its sandstone carvings of beasts and angels on churches and palazzi seeming new-minted. We wandered into the main piazza, a gracious setting for the 17th-century cathedral, its Bishop’s Palace and seminary.
It is still a lively university town, with many restaurants offering traditional cucina del Salento. The dishes were the result of poverty – not much meat, some fish, pasta, beans and many vegetables, both wild and cultivated. Orichietti, or little ears, is the distinctive shaped pasta, with cime di rapa, a kind of bitter broccoli; or ciceri e tria, chickpeas with home-made pasta.
Seaside trips were a more popular choice with the family.

Along the coast going north from Gallipoli we paused at the former fishing village of Santa Maria al Bagno, at the entrance to which are four large columns surrounded by palm trees, the remnants of a 17th-century fortress built to keep out Saracen marauders. Along the winding road around the next headland is the magnificent nature reserve of Porto Selvaggio.
We carried our picnic a mile through steep pinewoods throbbing with cicadas down to a rocky inlet. Here the coast is undeveloped, though it is a popular spot packed with visitors in July. The swimming is delicious because ice-cold freshwater springs run into the sea at this point, creating freezing patches of clear water.
An advantage of being on the Ionian coast is that it faces west: in the evening we sat on the rocks with a glass of wine and watched the red sun sink into the sea. Gallipoli’s Ancient Greeks probably did the same.


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