The charm of the past is breathed in the farm. These ancient buildings, which stand out white in the bright blue of the sky, are the symbol of Apulia, characterized by an agricultural economy since its origins. The oldest date back to the year 1000 and, according to the production function which carried out, they divide themselves among those tower shaped, those fortified without tower, those non-fortified “of sheep and field” with trulli where the cattle shelter himself, those castle shaped.
These small ancient worlds flourished especially on routes used by shepherds during transhumance and, with the spread of banditry and the pirates from the sea, were transformed into real fortified villages, equipping themselves with loopholes, trap doors, drawbridges and towers of sighting. In the ‘700 these complex rural became real villages that housed the main house, often with the side chapel, the peasants’ houses, barns, stables, the oil-mill, the fields for agricultural cultivation. In the next century, many were transformed into country residences of the new bourgeoisie, enriched with scrolls, stairs, statues and balustrades.
Today, the farms of Puglia, about two thousand are still there, which characterize in a decisive way the apulian country in the heart of the Murgia, in the south of Bari area to Brindisi and Taranto and in Salento. Often they appear suddenly in the countryside, with the grandeur and dignity of those who have a long series of real-life stories to tell.
Sometimes, lost the original production function, the buildings in limestone or tuff are transformed from farms in elegant homes or farm holidays. Become “guest houses” are the true mirror of the art of living in Puglia. But the life on the farm, which is still productive with sheep and oxen and olive groves, fruit trees and vines, or the more “comfortable” because transformed into refined resort, you can not just tell, you have to live it fully from beginning to end.
So our advice is that to visit many of them to relive atmosphere now forgotten and, drifting from the imagination, recalling the days when the farm represented the active hub of rural life, but also the gift of the Longobard bridegroom to his bride in the day after the wedding.
