Ostuni Geography & Climate

Ostuni stands where the Murgia plateau makes its final drop to the Adriatic, and the town is placed exactly on the edge of that step.

The last hill

The old town occupies one of three low hills at around 220 metres. Behind it the land rises gently into the karst uplands of the Valle d'Itria; in front it falls away in a series of terraces to a coastal plain eight kilometres wide. The position gives the town a view over the whole plain to the sea, and gave it, historically, the ability to see anyone coming.

The olive plain

That plain is the Piana degli Ulivi Secolari, an almost continuous grove of monumental olive trees running for tens of kilometres along the coast. Many are centuries old and some are credibly reckoned in thousands of years; their trunks are hollowed, split and braided into shapes that look more geological than botanical. The grove is protected, and it is one of the densest concentrations of ancient olives anywhere in the Mediterranean.

Xylella

Since 2013 the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa has spread north through Salento and into this area, killing trees that cannot be replaced in any human timescale. The damage is visible from the road and is the single biggest change to the landscape in living memory.

Where the lime came from

The whiteness has a local source. The same limestone that the town is built of was quarried and burnt in kilns on the edge of the settlement to make lime, so the coating and the walls beneath it come from the same rock. That is why limewashing was cheap enough to do to everything, and to keep doing.

The coast

Low rock alternating with sand, and at Torre Guaceto a protected marine and land reserve of dune, wetland and clear shallow water — the least built-up stretch of coast for a long way in either direction.

Ostuni has a Mediterranean climate improved by its position — high enough to catch the wind, close enough to the sea to be moderated by it.

Summer

July and August are hot, with highs generally between 30 and 33°C, and effectively rainless. The hill is the advantage: a sea breeze reaches the old town most afternoons and evenings, so it is consistently more comfortable than the coastal plain below or the interior behind. The white walls, which reflect rather than absorb, are doing real work.

Winter

Mild and short. January highs run around 13°C, frost is occasional on the hill and rare on the plain, and snow is an event that happens perhaps once a decade. Winter is grey more often than cold.

Rain

Around 600 millimetres a year, almost all between October and March, often as heavy short storms. There is no surface water to speak of; the rock takes it all.

The wind

Two winds matter. The tramontana off the Balkans arrives cold and clear and can make a bright winter day feel far colder than the reading; the scirocco from Africa brings humid heat and fine reddish dust that settles on the white walls and is promptly washed off again.

Spring and autumn

The best of the year by a distance. April and May are green and full of flowers before the burn-off; September and October are warm, the sea is still swimmable and the olive harvest begins in late autumn.

Light

Worth mentioning on its own: a white town under a low sun is a different thing from a white town at noon, and the hour after dawn and before dusk is when Ostuni looks like its photographs.