Look out, Tuscany, here comes Puglia. Down in Italy's heel, a rich and ancient culture is taking on a high-stepping style. Ondine Cohane catches the moment—and the cucina

It's an August Sunday in the seaside town of Trani. Feast-day celebrations are under way alongside the town's centerpiece, a cream-colored cathedral that seems to rise out of the sea. It's a quintessential Italian creation: fine bronze doors, a delicate rose window, Romanesque arches and columns perfectly ordered. That is, until you look closely at the facade, where familiar biblical scenes are interrupted by the occasional elephant or leopard, a nod to the region's Byzantine and Persian past, when Near Eastern art melded with Christian imagery.

The weathered eleventh-century cathedral is perfectly accessorized by the golden light behind it and the sea before it. In the crypt, choirboys are dressing for an outdoor concert performance but take time out for a wolf whistle as I pass—much to the presiding priest's consternation. Upstairs in the Norman apse, a service is in progress. An open window creates an infinity-pool effect over the Adriatic.

All along the harbor, food stands and open-air bars have been set up, selling everything from porchetta sandwiches to Bacardi Breezers (the drink of choice this summer). That evening, a procession leaves the cathedral—a marching band, village officials, the choir, and a small boy who leads the way holding a banner depicting a local saint. After they pass, boats at sea release fireworks into the sky for a half-hour extravaganza as kids and grandparents push against one another, competing for standing room. Wherever you are in Italy, on pretty much any night in August, you can find a local festa taking place. But what strikes me as unusual about this one—and I have been to quite a few in this country—is that although there are plenty of Italian visitors joining in the party, I am the only foreigner in sight.

Puglia, with five hundred miles of Ionian and Adriatic coastline, limestone plateaus, austere mountains, and arid but surprisingly fertile farmland, can most easily be pinpointed on a map as Italy's heel—or perhaps more accurately its stiletto, the closest point to Turkey, Greece, and North Africa. Waves of invasion by those neighbors, and by foreigners from farther afield, have created a unique and layered history. Its architectural diversity is a visual record of the mix: Whitewashed towns straight out of Greece lie within miles of Bourbon Baroque cities; Norman castles and Moorish-influenced buildings rise a short distance from traditional Pugliese houses with characteristic conical shapes.

More recently, in the last couple of decades, northern Italians, despite their famous disdain for the south, have come here for what are perhaps the country's most beautiful beaches. Brits have just now started to arrive after hearing that farmhouses and large tracts of land can be had for a fraction of the cost of those in Tuscany, and they have discovered that they like this part of Italy just as much. Meanwhile, Pugliese dishes have begun to appear on Italian menus in London and New York, and wine producers from Tuscany and Piedmont have invested enormous amounts of money in taming the robust vintages from the Salentine Peninsula into more subtle, but still faithfully local, blends—making epicures dub the region the country's next big thing.