Sant'Agata to Locorotondo

 

Thursday was a travel day from Sant'Agata to one of Italy's 'most beautiful villages' called Locorotondo, and we were pondering the many contradictions of this country while we drove. 

There's such an attention to beauty - house numbers and letters boxes are detailed and often ornate, banisters and even bars on windows are in intricate swirls. A tiled border around external plumbing has an edging of stylised flowers. But the electrical wiring is a tangled spaghetti mess tacked to the building; there are new travertine marble steps in stairwells where the paint has been peeling since the 1700s; numerous whole bags of litter dumped by the highway, a reflection of Italy's ongoing battle with waste disposal; and unfinished buildings - multi-story carparks, office blocks - standing derelict in the middle of fields. 

Then we got to Locorotondo. The old town circles the top of a hill with views over the surrounding countryside. There are white cobbled steps and alleyways, big pots of geraniums and jasmine in bloom everywhere, tiny chapels like miniature jewels opening straight on to the streets. There's nothing that's not beautiful.