This region is different from cliché Italy – an area with which most Italians are unfamiliar. Here the Abruzzo, Molise and Puglia regions narrow down to the heel of Italy’s boot, the Apennines fade away, replaced by  undulating agricultural country. The heel has a kick in it, in the form of generous wines, noted for strength if not always for quality. Most of Italy’s olives are grown in Puglia.

Urban architecture reinforces the foreign look. It is the legacy of a fascinating mixture of foreign overlords down the ages – Goths and Byzantines and Normans (the last made themselves at home on Italy’s heel about the time their brothers were conquering England in 1066); the Swabian Hohenstaufens, leaving the most indelible marks; Saracens, Greeks, French again and Aragonese, coming and going. For long periods this Adriatic coast looked towards Athens and the eastern Mediterranean rather than Rome or Florence and that gives the seaport towns and the thickly-lime washed hill cities a character all their own.

You could sum up the extraordinarily rich ecclesiastical heritage in the phrase ‘simple faith and Norman blood’. In the mountainous Abruzzo you come across many a sacred grotto and lonely sanctuary, often cut out of living rock, with legends of miracles attached to them. In Puglia, where important churches abound, religion was a more stern and stately business. This is the region of the clinical, austere style called Apulian Romanesque. To compensate for the strict geometry, the medieval architects let themselves go in the matter of gargoyles and carved beasts – some of the stone monsters are terrifying.

The best places to visit are mostly beach resorts along the old Adriatic highway. They are less regimented than the great holiday places farther north. Sand is left au naturel, not raked and sifted every day. Puglia’s olive woods stop short of the coast and the sun blazes down on treeless, flat tongues of rock which Nature designed for skin divers. Add to that a market-gardening tableland, some bijou fishing harbours, two big cities, red earth, dazzling white limestone and green swathes of vegetation and you have the topography of the area.

The remaining sights are mostly on the autostrada, one of Italy’s last to be built and least congested. Some take in undiscovered landscapes, of which there are many in these regions. See also Puglia: Gargano and Puglia and Basilicata.

TRANSPORT

Airports: Bari (international and domestic), Foggia and Brindisi (both domestic) serve the air traveler.

The main railway is the coastal Ancona-Lecce line, which has a branch gong inland from Pescara (the rest of Abruzzo being virtually trainless) and branches from the big railway junction of Foggia in Puglia to the Gargano promontory.

The national highway Venice-Brindisi is the route for express buses through the regions. Local bus services in Molise and the Abruzzo are useful but, away from the coast, they take roundabout routes. In Puglia they are first-class, as are the country roads. The principal operators are SITA (www.sitabus.it/en/ for Foggia, Bari, Brindisi); and the road services of Sud-Est (www.fseonline.it) and Appulo-Lucane (www.ferrovieappulolucane.it) railways. Bari and Brindisi have boat services along and across the Adriatic and catamarans Bari-Durrës and Brindisi-Corfu. Ortona, Vieste, Vasto, Termoli and Rodi Garganico have hydrofoil and/or ferry-boat links with the Tremiti isles (45 mins to 2 hrs). From Manfredonia you can sail round the Gargano promontory, a whole-day trip.