Ostuni

White walls, ancient olive trees and the Adriatic waiting at the bottom of the hill.

Ostuni gets plenty of attention for being the White City, but the real reason to stay is everything around it. The old town sits high above a vast plain of olive trees, with the Adriatic visible in the distance and some of Puglia’s best masserie scattered along the roads below. Stay in town and you can walk out for coffee, dinner and a late drink without thinking about the car. Stay outside it and mornings begin among olive groves, breakfast stretches longer than planned and the pool can easily swallow an afternoon. The best hotels in Ostuni make use of both sides of the place: a proper southern Italian town and the agricultural landscape that has sustained it for centuries.

best for

• Masserie and old olive groves

• Dinner and drinks in town

• Coast and countryside together

• Exploring Puglia by car

skip if

• You want to stay on the beach

• You are travelling without a car

• Nightlife is a priority

• You want everything on-site

Why Stay in Ostuni?

Ostuni is one of those rare bases where staying put does not mean seeing less. You can spend the morning swimming on the Adriatic, come back through kilometres of olive trees and be sitting in the old town with a glass of wine before dinner. Or do almost nothing. Some of the best days here are the ones that disappear between breakfast, the pool and a long lunch at the masseria. Ceglie Messapica and Cisternino are close enough for an evening out, while the coast is around twenty minutes away. Ostuni gives you options without making the trip feel like a checklist.

Hotels

Palazzo San Giuseppe

Five rooms on Ostuni's main corso, for trips that need a town address and little ceremony.

Why stay here

Palazzo San Giuseppe keeps the proposition deliberately small. Five rooms sit on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, a few minutes on foot from Piazza della Libertà, with breakfast downstairs and a terrace and hot tub above the street. There is no restaurant, pool or estate to organise the day around. Cafes handle the morning, the old town fills the evening and the surrounding masserie remain places to visit. On a page dominated by olive groves and converted farms, this is the useful counterweight: an affordable front door onto Ostuni rather than another reason to drive into it.

Best for

Car-light town stays where location, simplicity and an approachable price take priority.

VISTA Ostuni

A former convent and tobacco factory giving Ostuni 28 rooms and three distinct ways to swim.

Why stay here

VISTA carries several lives inside one building: fourteenth-century convent, refuge for girls, tobacco factory and, since 2025, the white town's most ambitious hotel. Architect Roberto Murgia kept those layers visible across 28 rooms, while Erik Dhont shaped the garden below. A pool sits there, another below ground in the spa and a rooftop lap pool runs beside herbs planted at eye level. From the roof, Ostuni's terraces fall towards the Adriatic. Masserie dominate the surrounding countryside. VISTA gives the town itself a serious hotel, and the roofline makes the argument immediately.

Best for

Travellers who want Ostuni at the door and the olive plain viewed from above.

Paragon 700 Boutique Hotel & SPA

The red palazzo in the white city, with eleven rooms and a garden hidden behind it.

Why stay here

Ostuni is white by law and habit, which gives Palazzo Rosso's Pompeii-red facade the force of an interruption. The seventeenth-century home of the town's first mayor later became a customs barracks, then stood empty for forty years. Owners Pascale Lauber and Ulrike Bauschke uncovered frescoes, stone vaults and a convent door during the restoration, filling eleven rooms with salvage, art and colour. Behind the palazzo, a walled garden and pool create rare breathing room inside the old town. Paragon 700 belongs here because Ostuni has nothing else remotely like it.

Best for

Design-conscious town stays with the passeggiata outside and a private garden behind the walls.

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Masseria San Paolo Grande

Eleven rooms, a long breakfast table and enough working land to keep guests outside.

Why stay here

San Paolo Grande stays close to guesthouse scale. Eleven vaulted rooms occupy the old farm buildings, several still holding stone fireplaces, and the small number of guests naturally gathers around breakfast. Organic, seasonal ingredients shape the restaurant, with much of the produce coming from the estate garden. Walks lead through a small educational forest; cooking classes and tastings bring the farm into the day rather than leaving it beyond the window. Ostuni is around seven kilometres away. The property feels built for using, from the garden paths to the shared table.

Best for

Small-scale farm stays where meals, walks and other guests become part of the rhythm.

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Masseria Le Carrube

A stone masseria whose vegetable garden determines the entire kitchen, not simply the side dishes.

Why stay here

Le Carrube makes one unusually clear promise. Chef Massimo Santoro cooks without meat or fish, building the restaurant around organic vegetables, herbs and fruit, much of it grown across the garden, olive grove and 250 fruit trees outside. The decision gives the whole property a point of view. Traditional vaults and rough stone keep the rooms grounded in the Ostuni countryside, while the menu reveals what that land can produce without turning every meal into a declaration. Many masserie keep a kitchen garden. Le Carrube lets the garden run the hotel.

Best for

Food-led stays and travellers curious about a fully plant-based reading of Puglia.

Masseria Grieco

A fortified farm where Ostuni's olive plain becomes the setting rather than the view.

Why stay here

Masseria Grieco has worked this landscape longer than Ostuni has drawn visitors to it. Ten hectares of woodland and centuries-old olive trees surround the sixteenth-century farm, with the pool held quietly among the groves. Twenty-five rooms keep local stone, heavy vaults and walls that remain cool through August. Breakfast follows what the estate and its neighbours produce. Ostuni is ten minutes away, easy for dinner without shaping the whole day. Most people photograph the white town from this olive plain. Grieco gives you a place inside the photograph.

Best for

Ostuni stays where the olive landscape matters as much as the white town.

Where to Eat Nearby

Masseria Moroseta

Surrounded by olive groves outside Ostuni, Masseria Moroseta approaches cooking with the same quiet simplicity that shapes the rest of the property. The kitchen works with nearby farms and seasonal gardens, letting vegetables, olive oil, and Adriatic seafood guide the menu. Dinner often stretches into the evening light, a natural reflection of farm to table restaurants in Puglia.

Ostuni or Polignano a Mare?

This mostly comes down to how much you want the sea to dictate the day. In Polignano a Mare, the Adriatic is the main event: cliffside streets, rocky coves and swims squeezed in whenever the water looks good. Ostuni gives you more land. Masserie, olive farms and inland towns become part of everyday life, while the coast remains close enough to use when you want it. Polignano makes more sense for a short, sea-focused stay. Ostuni is the stronger base for a few slower days with a car, particularly if eating well, staying in the countryside and not having every hour accounted for sounds like your version of Puglia.

Explore Other Neighbourhoods

Polignano a Mare

Cliff swims, working farms and an Adriatic coast best enjoyed from just behind it.

Salento

Baroque towns, Primitivo country and two very different seas at the end of Puglia.

Ostuni

White walls, ancient olive trees and the Adriatic waiting at the bottom of the hill.

best for

skip if

Why Stay in Ostuni?

Hotels

Palazzo San Giuseppe

VISTA Ostuni

Paragon 700 Boutique Hotel & SPA

Masseria San Paolo Grande

Masseria Le Carrube

Masseria Grieco

Where to Eat Nearby

Masseria Moroseta

Ostuni or Polignano a Mare?

Explore Other Neighbourhoods

Polignano a Mare

Salento

explore other destinations

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