But despite the unique cultural, culinary, and natural landscapes, it is only recently that Puglia has acquired a new generation of hotels to match the caliber of its resources and setting. Well-designed and striking, these masserie (fortified farmhouses) provide the launching pad into towns and for trips to landmarks where you can still find yourself the only English-speaking visitor (a rarity in Italy these days). To be sure, the tourism infrastructure is spotty at times.—city shops are known to shut for six hours at a time, cathedrals have elusive hours, and road signs for a single town often point in different directions. But to many, it is precisely the juxtaposition of unforgettable back-alley no-menu restaurants and new five-star hotels that makes the region so characterful. Puglia is primed for the next invasion and ready to show off its considerable assets, though as one local put it, "People have always come and often stay, but life for us remains the same."

I have planned a ten-day itinerary, starting midway down Puglia's Adriatic coast, from where I can explore some of the northern cities and then wind my way south. I want to focus on the towns and cities that most vividly exemplify the architectural melting pot of the region, while leaving plenty of time for the melting pot of food and drink as well.

Bari, my first stop, is a sprawling port that in the twelfth century, under the Normans, rivaled Venice in importance. Bombed extensively and occupied by American and British soldiers during World War II, it remains one of the country's most important fishing centers, and it is the departure point for ferries to Croatia, Greece, and Albania. Beautiful but dilapidated, the old city's narrow twisting streets and peeling facades surround the Basilica di San Nichola. Here is a break from the early Renaissance architecture you see in the rest of Italy: The bigger buildings are boxy and Gothic, the streets themselves deeply medieval. Bari's residents remind me of those in my Brooklyn neighborhood, where southern Italian immigrants are numerous. Grannies in housedresses and slippers sit outside on plastic deck chairs, explosions of brightly colored blooms spill from flower boxes overhead, geezers slap down dominoes outside a social club, twentysomethings engage in a rowdy game of cards in a courtyard, a housewife shucks peas on her stoop as she listens to the radio, every alley seems to have groups of people gossiping and gesturing.

The benefits of public space can perhaps best be understood in places like this—the cramped maze a stage for the theater of daily life. But there are darker economic reasons for these scenes. Disparities in wealth persist between the north and the south of Italy, the country's agonizing problema del mezzogiorno ("the problem of the south"). Unemployment still hovers at around twenty-five percent—were southern Italy an independent country, it would be Europe's poorest. Later, as I stroll along the waterfront promenade, I see an Ape scooter-truck parked, its back filled with crates of Peroni beer. Inspired by all the hanging out, I tentatively join the old guys in their swimming trunks sitting on the wall for a cold one.