Ostuni

OSTUNI

The City of Ostuni is built on the foothills of the southern Murgia. Its old town, called Earth, is unmistakable the blinding monochrome color of its settlement, strictly white.

The houses painted lime and the peculiar topography have earned epithets fairytale, as the White City, Queen of Olives, City Manger.

Ostuni is a fascinating tangle of narrow, winding streets, a succession of courtyards, squares and streets that once were owned by five doors opened into the city wall, with towers, machicolations and hoardings.

The only true way to reach the summit of the "cone" and that divides the old town into two parts is via Cathedral, while all the others that intersect it are dead ends or narrow and steep stairs. Here are cubicolari homes, often dug into the rock.

Moonstone - The White City

Magical, frozen in time, Ostuni is a noble woman with her pale and handsome face, Beauty is the charm of this corner of the Mediterranean and the hospitality of the people can never be enclosed in these pages, visitors and guests of this land will live immersed in history, culture and sea ... a stay in keeping with the beauty of the place with a spontaneous architecture that will envelop you, preserved in time the natural and cultural treasures of the white city and its territory waiting to travelers how they will live an adventure as merchants in search of the history of this precious jewel.

The Borgo Antico

And 'that gives the unmistakable jewel in Ostuni its picturesque urban identity. E 'it defined by Ostuni Earth. Painted only in white, it stands on the highest hill of the urban territory.

Here is all a proliferation of plans, of ups and downs, alleys and stairs, tangled streets that cross bows and squares. On its top stand the monumental Cathedral and the Bishop's Palace.

Crossroads of Peoples - Argonauts

Inhabited since prehistoric times, the territory of Ostuni is occupied around 1000 a. C. Japigi and Messapi. The city is destroyed by Hannibal in the Second Punic War, rebuilt by Greek colonists and, in later centuries, occupied by the Ostrogoths and Lombards, Saracens and Moors, Normans and Swabians. In 1507 it was annexed to the Duchy of Bari of Isabella of Aragon.

During nearly two centuries of Spanish rule the ostunesi try several times to object, until in 1799 proclaim the free and republican town.

II Congress of Vienna marks the return of the Bourbons, but also the flowering of sections of the Carbonari and then the Young Italy. The August 26, 1860, just days after the departure of Garibaldi from Messina, Ostuni - first city of the Puglia - breaks down the Bourbon coat of arms and he waves the flag.