Expert, practical travel guide to visit Puglia without a car: how feasible it is, what you can see in Puglia by train, practical tips to get around Puglia by public transport.
Puglia is one of the areas of Italy best explored by car.
Part of the region are served by trains and there are buses connecting some of the towns.
However, the rail network in this area is limited and buses do not reach the most rural areas, country stays or many of the most secluded beaches: this means that exploring Puglia without car is limiting, but it is also possible!
The key to visiting Puglia without your own transport is to have realistic expectations on what you can do, how to get places and the budget you may need for tours with drivers.
I hope this honest, personal experience helps you plan your trip at best!
Getting to Puglia without a car
Puglia is connected to the rest of Italy by train and plane and to the rest of Europe by plane and ferries.
By plane: the main airports in Puglia are Bari and Brindisi
By ferry: ferries connect Puglia to Greece
By train: High speed trains connect Rome to Bari, Brindisi, Foggia and Lecce.
Once you are in one of these bigger centers, you have different transport options, depending on where you need to go and how much moving around you intend on doing. Let’s see these options one by one.
The best places to visit in Puglia without a car
Without a car, we found easy to reach:
Bari – a large center with a beautiful historic center (plane, bus and train)
Alberobello – famous for its trulli, it is served by several tour operators offering day trips, often combined with nearby Locorotondo or Matera (I do NOT recommend seeing Matera on the same, day. I recommend a full day in Matera instead or even better a night there)
Trani – stunning small town on the Adriatic coast with a stunning duomo and a pleasant marina and small town center (train)
Monopoli – very pretty white town with a pleasant walkable center (bus)
Polignano al Mare – beautiful white village of social media fame, perched on impressive rock formations plunging in the sea
Ostuni – stunning white city that, a little like Polignano, is now well known and very popular with overseas tourism especially
Lecce – stunning art city with churches so unique and artistic meaningful that Lecce is referred to as the ‘Florence of the South’.
Puglia by train
Puglia is served by a main train line that connects Bari, Brindisi and Lecce and is served by high speed and intercity trains.
This main lines works really well, has comfortable trains and it is ideal if you need to get from city to city, since it goes from a town center to the other.
The area of Bari and Brindisi is also served by more local trains, which use the railway tracks along the coast.
These tracks connect many of the pretty towns in this part of Puglia and we have used it successfully to see Bari and Lecce, as well as:
Trani – an adorable town with a stunning duomo on the pier, a vision of Romanesque architecture like no other
Polignano al Mare – social media famous Polignano is the pretty town on cliffs you’ve see in so many posts and reels!
Monopoli – cute, unassuming, charming Monopoli is one of the cutest towns in the area and one of the easiest towns to use as a base for day trips by train
Molfetta – cute seaside town with lovely while and sand colored architecture and a charming old center.
The trains serving these towns are intercity and regional trains of a good standard.
Intercity trains are long distance trains and have assigned seats: usually they cost a little more than regional trains and may only stop in some of the towns, as intermediate stop between two bigger centers.
Regional trains do not have assigned seating and are more comparable to urban transport, operating on a first come first served basis in terms of seats and, at busy times, potentially requiring you to stand, a little like you would on a city subway (the trains are surface trains, not underground).
We found that, compared with other parts of Italy, Puglia had good regional trains, clean and well kept.
I traveled on them alone with my two young kids and found them safe and perfectly adequate. We just wished the network was more extensive as we quickly ran out of places to reach by train!
Places we had wanted to see but could not reach by train were Alberobello, Locorotondo, Martina Franca, Fasano Zoo and Castellana Caves, which we had to reach by different means.
This train network does work to connect some of the towns such as Lecce to Galatina or Lecce to Gallipoli, yet we found in most other cases the journey required both the use of a train and a bus, which resulted in a long and more annoying journey.
Just like in Tuscany without a car, we found public transport was also very limiting in terms of reachable areas, since they do not really allow to reach rural locations such as country stays, farms, olive groves or country restaurants.
For rural destinations and the non city beaches, a car was a must for us.
Puglia by bus
The bus network in Puglia partially compensates the lack of train infrastructures.
Our experience of Puglia without a car – honest trip report
When we studies how to get around Puglia without a car, we got excited by the many options that seemed to open in front of us and indeed, part of the experience worked well.
The other part, not so much!
What worked – town hopping in the area of Bari worked well.
We easily went to Polignano, Monopoli and Trani and found the trains reliable easy to use and safe.
We did not find this to the be the case for other destinations.
For instance, we wanted to visit Castellana Caves and the local info office, as well as the web, had informed us that it was possible without a car.
However, the schedule of public transport we were given (this was from the local info point, not a random source on the web!) didn’t seem to match the reality and there was no transport to be found at that time, so we ended up not going, and wasting out already paid Castellana Cave ticket, bough trusting the info we had.
Especially with kids, you can imagine how this made for a rather frustrating experience.
The other thing we found was that sourcing taxis and private drivers was not so easy.
In some towns, for instance in Polignano or Monopoli, we found some taxis outside of the station but this was not the case in all towns and we didn’t always manage to get a ride when we rang (in Italian) the taxi number provided art the stand.
Even when looking for private drivers, we found the one company we got from the web not to be reachable by phone and physically not at the location indicated on their website and local map.
Lats but not least, we found local tours VERY expensive especially if you are a family as you pay per person and not pert vehicle.
So, in the end, we rented a car for a few days, which resulted in a fantastic Puglia experience and the chance of seeing stunning places we would have never otherwise gotten to!
In the area of Lecce, we found the car to be essential.
Organized day trips to see Puglia without a car
If you do not want to drive in Puglia and do not want to rely on public transport only, there are some touts that you make take locally. Some you may consider are:
Alberobello, Locorotondo and olive oil tasting from Ostuni – an easy way to see Alberobello’s Trulli and pretty Locorotondo with its whitewashed alleys without having to drive and with the support and guidance of a certified local guide.
Day trip to Alberobello, Locorotondo from Bari – a little fast for my liking (too many towns for one day) but a handy way to get to towns such as Alberobello and Locorotondo which are cute and not easy without a car.
This tour allows you to see the pretty trulli of Alberobello and the picture perfect white houses of delightful Locorotondo
Otranto, Santa Maria di Leuca, Galatina and Gallipoli Tour from Lecce – a handy tours to see the beautiful mosaic of the Tree of Life in Otranto duomo, Santa Maria di Leuca views, the pretty fortified town of Gallipoli and stunning Galatina, home to outstanding frescoes, the fascinating concept of taranta and delicious pasticciotto!
Ostuni, Cisternino and Polignano from Bari – a good tour to see the pretty white hilltop town of Ostuni, cute and lesser known Cisternino (Ostuni and Polignano are very touristy) and famous Polignano al Mare.
