The trip south to Martina Franca

Our plan

We planned a drive south from Florence that would include three stops before we would finally arrive at Martina Franca where we would stay for a week. The three stops are shown in red on the map. 

We drove from Florence to Castello di Semivicoli on a Wednesday afternoon and stayed at the Castello overnight. Thursday afternoon we drove 75 miles to San Martino in Pensilis, mostly over country roads. Friday afternoon we drove to Trani, and easier drive of 110 miles along Italian superhighways where the speed limit is 81 mph ... and people really drive that fast. The final leg of the trip on Saturday was an hour and a half drive to Martina Franca and an apartment on the edge of the old town.

Street in the old town

From our base in Martina Franca, a town of 50,000, we visited the small towns of Alberobello, Ostuni, and Matera by car. To visit Bari, we took a regional train and saw the countryside at a leisurely pace and arrived in the center of Bari without having to find a place to park.

Martina Franca was not a tourist destination so we thought that it might make a quiet place to stay while we took day trips to places in the area that were tourist destinations. We think that our plan worked well.

Martina Franca has an old town that is full of white buildings. The old town is generally well kept and there is a busy promenade between the religious center, the cathedral, and a lively civic center, Piazza XX Settembre. On the weekends and on the weekdays in the afternoon the street between these two locations were full of people walking and checking out all the shops and restaurants that are found along these streets. The other streets in the old town were very quiet.

Basilica of Saint Martin

The new town that surrounds the old town is not impressive. The new town consists of five and six story apartment buildings, tightly packed, with cars parked everywhere. We were fortunate; the apartment included gated parking but the apartment was situated on a busy ring road that hugged the edges of the old town.

The cathedral, dedicated to Saint Martin, was impressive with an odd shaped piazza in front. A second piazza connected to the cathedral piazza that made a pleasant, active public space. On our last evening in Martina Franca a movie was being shot in the piazza. We watched the production but it moved at a snail’s pace. It can’t be that glamorous a life to spend so much time waiting for the director to yell, “Action” of whatever they say in Italian. We gave up waiting.

The civic piazza

The civic piazza was a treat. Full of people, benches, and trees, it was a nice place for the Martinesi to stroll, shop, and talk with friends. The piazza was called XX Settembre, the 20th of September and we’d notice that lots of piazzas in Italy are named for various dates. We checked and this was the date in 1870 when Rome was finally added to a unified Italian state. At that point the capital of the new state was moved from Florence to Rome.

A baby girl lives in this house

The old town has it charms. The architecture is more Baroque, intricately complicated but often pointlessly so. This doorway was pleasant because it announced that a baby girl had been born to the family that lived within. This is a common thing to see in all of Italy where children are so highly prized.