Things to Do in Polignano a Mare in Half a Day

Forty Minutes From the Airport, and the First Thing You See

Polignano a Mare is the right first stop in Puglia — about forty minutes south of Bari airport, which means you can land in the morning, collect a hire car, and be looking down at the Adriatic before lunch. That is exactly what we did: our first photograph here is timed 10:58 on 19 September, a couple of hours off the plane.

Coming from Bari airport too? You can find an affordable hire car there through Localrent (affiliate link).

The town is built on a limestone cliff straight above the sea. The old centre sits on top of it, white and compact, and the coast underneath is a run of caves and inlets. You do not need long here — half a day covers it properly — but you should not skip it either.

We parked at Parcheggio San Francesco, a short walk from the centre and the sensible place to leave a car for a few hours.

Lama Monachile: A Beach at the Bottom of a Ravine

This is the picture everyone has seen of Polignano, and it earns it. A short pebble beach sits at the bottom of a gorge cut between two cliffs, with an old bridge carried across the top and white houses stacked above the water on both sides. You look down on it before you ever get to it.

In September it is still full. The photograph at the top of this page is timed 12:37 and the water is thick with swimmers. That is not a complaint — it is a small beach in a famous town and the sea is warm into autumn — but if you want it quiet you want to be there early, or you want the other cove further down this page.

You can swim here, and beach time was on our plan for the afternoon. Walk the bridge for the view down the ravine before you climb back into the old town; the steps down to the pebbles are steep and there is no sand, so bring something for your feet.

The Tuk-Tuk Tour: €40, Half an Hour, and Worth It

We took a tuk-tuk tour of the town — €40 for the three of us, about thirty minutes — booked on the spot from one of the drivers waiting near the centre. They are local people rather than a franchise, and the half hour is as much commentary as transport: they stop at the landmarks, tell you what happened at each one, and fill in the history you would otherwise walk straight past.

We did not have time to walk Polignano properly. This turned out to be the better option anyway, and with a child it is the difference between seeing the viewpoints along the coast and seeing the inside of a car park. Nobody has to be carried.

The Cove the Tourists Miss — and a Boat Full of Books

The part of the tour worth the money was the stop our driver called the one the tourists miss. He took us away from Lama Monachile to a second, far calmer cove — a fishermen's inlet where the people swimming were locals rather than day visitors, with a slipway, a few moored boats and almost nobody on the rocks.

Sitting on the rock above it is an old wooden rowing boat filled with books, free to take and free to leave: the Librarca, in Cala Portalga. It was a Polignano fisherman's boat, and rather than scrap it the men who look after the cove cut it in two: half of it holds about a hundred books on three shelves — the other half became the cove's nativity scene (SiViaggia).

The tuk-tuk tour also takes you north along the coast: cliffs, prickly pear and, just offshore, the Scoglio dell'Eremita — the Hermit's Rock, also called the islet of San Paolo. The name comes from a legend about a man who chose the rock to live out his life alone; a chapel to Saint Anthony the Abbot once stood on it and was lost in wartime, and the cross on the top is what you see from the shore today. The rock is also a protected nesting site for the Audouin's gull (gabbiano corso), a rare gull that breeds almost only around the Mediterranean.

Good Time, an Octopus Burger, and a Coffee You Sit Down For

The best thing we ate on the whole trip was in Polignano. Good Time is a small bistro in the middle of the old town, on a vine-covered lane with a few tables outside and a large octopus painted beside the door. The octopus was cooked soft the whole way through — no rubber, no chew — and it came in a burger rather than a panino. We had the frittura mista alongside it and a local beer.

Then there is the coffee, and in Polignano the coffee is a drink of its own. At Il Super Mago del Gelo on Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi you order a caffè speciale: espresso with sugar, cream, a twist of lemon peel and the bar's own sweet almond liqueur, served in a small stemmed glass so you can see the layers. Mario Campanella put it together in about 1965 and it has been Polignano's drink ever since, copied up and down the coast (Comunicaffè). It is sweet, it is not a quick espresso, and you should have one anyway.