Our neighbor Vito is always bringing something over: turnip greens in winter, artichokes in spring, barattiere melons and tomatoes in summer, and crunchy taralli baked year-round by his friend Palma. If we’re not home, he leaves them on the porch on chipped plates. At first, it felt like too much, like we hadn’t done anything to deserve such generosity. But we came to understand that wasn’t the point; abundant kindness flows easily here, because the Pugliese see themselves as ambassadors of their way of living. Beyond understanding it, they want you to believe in it too.
Since deciding to live in Puglia, people often ask what drew me here. At the core, it’s simple: this place didn’t just make me feel welcome, it made me feel included.
About three years ago, I moved to the countryside outside Ostuni with my boyfriend, Stefano, and our dog, Agata. At first, we still went back to Milan fairly often, but over the past year we’ve found ourselves staying here more and more. The urge to return to the city we called home for nearly 15 years has, rather surprisingly and rather quickly, faded.
Our hospitality project started almost by accident. We renovated a small apartment in Ostuni, enjoyed the process, and decided to do it again. And then again. When we began hosting guests in the spaces we had brought back to life, we quickly realized that what mattered most to us wasn’t just offering a beautiful setting—it was, and still is, about sharing the deep sense of belonging we feel here.
Puglia, like much of southern Italy, has historically suffered from weak institutions and underdeveloped infrastructure—an imbalance that dates back to the post-unification period of the 19th century, when national policies prioritized the industrial North and left the South with poor transport networks, limited public services, and a fragile administrative framework. In the absence of reliable state support, a strong sense of community took root—one that remains vibrantly alive here, even as it fades in other parts of Italy. In Puglia, people often relied on informal networks of assistance on the familial and neighborhood level, and what began as a form of social resilience, born from the need to fill the gaps left by the state, evolved into a collective identity shaped by self-reliance and mutual care.
In the alleys of any town here, you’ll notice clothes always hanging outside on lines—whatever the season, whatever the weather—with the sharp scent of fabric softener lingering in the air. This unwavering confidence that they’ll dry eventually, even if they get soaked again in the meantime, feels to me like a fitting metaphor for the Puglian spirit: a combination of grounded fatalism, resourcefulness, and faith. A certainty that things will work out in the end—no hassle.
You can’t really schedule an appointment here—not in the strict sense of setting a specific time and day. It just doesn’t work, whether you’re meeting a friend or booking a plumber. Instead, you call that morning, ask if by any chance they’re around, and if you’re lucky, they’ll swing by at some point. You can’t count on a timeline either. Things happen when they happen.
Our contractor, Carmelo, used to have a favorite answer whenever we asked when he’d finish a job: “domani con dopodomani”—“tomorrow with the day after tomorrow.” A phrase that gestures toward an indefinite near future, where things will get done… eventually.
It can be frustrating at first, but you get used to it quickly—it’s like learning a new language: the rules are already in place, and you can’t change them. Bumping into someone you know means you have to stop and chat, even if you’re in a rush; a simple ciao is never enough. More than once, we’ve found ourselves stuck behind a car in the middle of the street because the driver had stopped to chat with someone coming from the opposite direction—both of them leaning out their windows. No one would dare ask them to move; you just wait until they say goodbye. The celebrated vita lenta that’s now romanticized all over social media is, in fact, real, though just not as picture-perfect or fascinating as it’s made to seem. Plans shift endlessly, time gets lost—and somehow, it’s just not a big deal.
Our carpenter, Onofrio—who comes from a long line of highly skilled Ostunese carpenters and claims to have made the fixtures in nearly every house in town—offers us a coffee every time we meet, no matter the hour, no matter how busy he is. We’ve come to understand that if we decline, he takes it personally. We have to share a coffee together—only then can we part ways.
And if you have a problem, everyone you speak to wants to be the one to solve it. Like the time we had to get a heavy piece of furniture into the house, but it wouldn’t fit through the door. Within minutes, a few passersby gathered to help. Someone found ropes. We wrapped it as best we could and, together, hoisted it up through the first-floor window—wobbling above our heads, someone shouting instructions, another guiding from below, all of us pulling and sweating until we finally got it inside. Then we all had a big laugh.
As Puglia’s popularity grows, so does a curated vision of the region. But while its charm is undeniable, what truly defines it is a kind of inner rawness—an uncomplicated, unbothered beauty that doesn’t need to try hard. It’s a state of things that, much like the disposition of its inhabitants, involves no effort and no fuss. A beauty that speaks a language everyone understands because it’s everywhere—even beside ugliness, even where no one seems to care. On the sides of the roads in springtime, where hundreds of perfectly colored wildflowers bloom, scattered and magnificent, tastefully framing even the most unremarkable street. In the bumpy sequence of the dry stone walls that punctuate the countryside, patched with different pieces, sometimes collapsed, often forgotten. In the bright, thick light that bounces off every corner, warming surfaces, smoothing edges. In the strong wind that, thanks to the peninsula’s narrow shape, sweeps the land from side to side—forcefully, ruthlessly—stirring tides and bending trees.
Beauty is a habit here—it belongs to the landscape, to the way things have always been. There’s no planning, and there never was: houses, fields, trees, uses, and customs were inherited as they came. They just happen to look picture-perfect, but that was never the point. It’s easy to recognize a part of yourself in this environment, to feel a sense of belonging in its flawed perfection.
Now that the southern “aesthetic” has gone mainstream, many over-polished versions of the Puglian way of living feel untruthful—especially when they become exclusionary, meant only for the chosen few. What strikes me most is the unostentatious generosity that runs through both the land and its people: an innate mix of inclusivity and improvisation that, to me, defines true hospitality. I’ve been learning a lot from it. And if there’s a right way to communicate this place—to talk about it, to present it to others—it has to carry that same spirit, the same joyful casualness that is, in the end, the soul of the region.
