What is Ostuni known for?

Whitewashed centro storico on three hills, lime-painted every spring since medieval plague measures, the single defining image of the town. Surrounding plain of monumental olive trees, some over a thousand years old, the largest concentration of ancient cultivated olives in the Mediterranean. Late fifteenth-century cathedral at the top of the centro storico, with a rose window of twenty-four rays unique in southern Italy.

Ostuni is a comune in the province of Brindisi, Apulia region of Italy, about 53 kilometers from Taranto.

Apulia · Brindisi

Ostuni

The Città Bianca on three hills, eight kilometers inland, whitewashed against the Murge above an Adriatic plain of olive trees.

53 km / 33 mi

Nearest hub (Taranto)

30,143

Population

Apr–Oct

Best time to visit

Recognised as

Why come

Ostuni sitson three hills above the Adriatic coastal plain, eight kilometers inland in the southeastern Murge. The whitewashing that gives it the name Città Bianca is medieval in origin, a hygienic measure against plague that survived as the local building convention; the entire centro storico is painted white in lime every spring and reads as a single bright mass from the surrounding olive country. The territory has been inhabited since the Paleolithic; the Messapii founded the urban nucleus before the Romans absorbed the region. The town joined the Norman County of Lecce in 996. In 1507 it passed to Isabella, Duchess of Bari, then to her daughter Bona Sforza, queen of Poland, who fortified the coast with watchtowers against Ottoman raids in 1539. The Cattedrale, a late-Gothic facade with a rose window of twenty-four rays, anchors the upper town. The olive landscape around the commune holds some of the oldest cultivated trees in the Mediterranean.

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Gallery

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Known for

Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta
Late fifteenth-century Gothic cathedral at the highest point of the centro storico, with a rose window of twenty-four rays unique in Puglia.
Centro storico
Whitewashed old town on three hills, lime-painted every spring against plague tradition, the single bright mass that names the Città Bianca.
Piazza della Libertà
Lower civic square outside the medieval walls, with the Guglia di Sant'Oronzo, an early eighteenth-century baroque obelisk to the patron saint.
Museo di Civiltà Preclassiche della Murgia Meridionale
Archaeological museum in the centro storico, holds Delia, the 25,000-year-old skeleton of a pregnant woman found in a Murge cave.
Piana degli Ulivi Monumentali
Surrounding olive plain with thousands of monumental trees, some over a thousand years old, the protected Puglia olive heritage zone.

When to visit

Best months · Apr–Oct

Best
Hot or crowded
Quiet
Mostly closed

April through June and September through October are the months Ostuni works: olive plain in flower or harvest light, the white walls glowing in mild evenings, the Adriatic eight kilometers away warm enough for swimming by mid-May. July and August touch thirty-five degrees and the centro storico fills with day-trippers from Bari and Brindisi; weekends in August are shoulder to shoulder in the upper alleys. Late afternoon and after dusk are the times to walk, when the white walls cool and the crowds thin. The Cavalcata di Sant'Oronzo in late August is the patronal pageant. November through March is quiet, several centro storico trattorie close, but the lime-white town in winter raking light is the photograph the postcards do not show.