Mark Dong Photography

Southern Italy

Yes, I returned to Italy again because I just love it here!  This time I even learned the language before I arrived!  I also couldn’t resist joining a group of photographers  - photo adventurers -who were bent on traveling  Coast to Coast through Southern Italy.  It was as interesting and as different as I imagined!

The PhotoVenture

 This trip involved a group of seven (7) photographers and an Italian guide/driver.  He is the one in the white cap and NOT carrying a camera!  We piled into a 10 seater Van and headed off from the Rome airport to the Amalfi Coast.  The goal was to see provinces and villages, the very  existence  of which, in Italy seemed unusual against the backdrop of Tuscany -  the area most  photographed  as representative of Italy.

Amalfi Coast

Happily, the first place we stayed was on the beautiful Amalfi Coast.  

We visited the beautiful cites of Positano,  Sorrento, and Conca dei Marini, the photographs from which are really not specifically  differentiated here, since all are located in dramatic natural settings below steep cliffs on Italy’s southwest coast. 

We stopped at Conca dei Marini to enjoy a fantastic dinner on the terrace at Le Bonta Del Capo.  The Chef gave us a demonstration on how to make Limoncello, a lemon flavored liqueur, for which this place was famous.

We drove along  the amazing  and frightening “strada costiera,” a zig zag two-lane highway with hairpin curves and a great view, with a stop at Ravello, before we drove straight across Italy to Matera. 

Matera

Matera is an amazing prehistoric city which lies in a small canyon carved out by the Gravina River.  It  is in the far south of the main portion of  Italy just before the start of the heel of the boot for which Italy is geographically known! 

Matera has gained international fame for its ancient town, the "Sassi di Matera" (meaning "stones of Matera"). The Sassi originated in a prehistoric troglodyte  settlement, and these dwellings are thought to be among the first ever human settlements in what is now Italy. 

The Sassi are habitations dug into the  rock itself. Many of them are really little more than caverns, and in some parts of the Sassi a street lies on top of another group of dwellings. The ancient town grew up on one slope of the rocky ravine created by a river that is now a small stream, and this ravine is known locally as "la Gravina". In the 1950s, the government of Italy used force to relocate most of the population of the Sassi to areas of the developing modern city.

Until the late 1980s the Sassi was considered an area of poverty, since its dwellings were, and in most cases still are, uninhabitable. The present local administration, however, has become more tourism-oriented, and it has promoted the regeneration of the Sassi with the aid of the Italian government, UNESCO, and Hollywood. Today there are many thriving businesses, pubs, and hotels there.

This town was full of a lot of steps.  For photographers who wanted to get alot of photographs of how people once lived here, it was quite exhausting. It must have been difficult to walk into town and back just to go to the store or to church, let alone visit your neighbors!

The photo above is the view outside the door to my hotel room.  Basically, what the hotel did was purchase a bunch of caves and remodeled and created a sequence of them into the Hotel.

 We walked to dinner in the rain that night.  We went to a (remodeled) cave restaurant that served amazing food.  We had Bruschetta and other appetizers, (see photo to immediate left and others below) freshly made pasta, roasted hot peppers, and deconstructed chocolate cake!  Fabulous!

Buon Appetito!

Then, it was off to Ostuni!

Ostuni

Ostuni was a place we stayed for several days.  It is centrally located in order to get to our later destinations of Polignano A Mare and Alberobello.

The region around Ostuni has been inhabited since the Stone Age.  It was established by a pre-classic tribe, destroyed by Hannibal, and rebuilt by the Greeks - Ostuni is Greek for “New Town.”

Ostuni is commonly referred to as “The White Town,” for its white walls and it’s white-painted architecture.

Polignano A Mare

We also took a one day to trip over to a small resort town, Polignano a Mare, along the eastern coast of Italy.    It was beautiful!

The statue is of the Italian singer and songwriter  Domenico Modugno born in Polignano a Mare in 1928.  He sang and popularized the   famous song “Volare.”

What a sight we must have been to everyone else!  But it was fun traveling in a group of photographers for a change!

Leaving Polignano A Mare before it gets too dark!  Back to Ostuni for the night.

Alberobello

Our final one day trip was to Alberobello!  This UNIQUE little town is a commune of the metropolitan city of Bari.  It has about 11,000 inhabitants and is famous for it’s unique trulli buildings.  The trulli, limestone dwellings found in the southern region of Puglia, are remarkable examples of drywall (mortarless) construction, a prehistoric building technique still in use in this region.  They are made of roughly worked limestone boulders collected from neighboring fields.  They also feature pyramidal, domed, or conical roofs built up of corbelled limestone slabs.

This site is of outstanding universal value because it is an exceptional example of a form of building construction derived from prehistoric construction techniques that has managed to survive intact and functioning in the modern world.

We even had a typical Puglia dinner inside a trulli home!  But, the trick was, this was a cooking class!  We learned how to make Orecchiette ( pasta) and meatless meatballs made of parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, and eggs.  The tour guide, Mimmo, treated us to trulli chocolates shaped like the little cone houses!

We saw this simple statute/shrine on the side of the road leading out of Alberobello.