Comune di Martina Franca

I have been attending this fantastic town for 40 years, in recent years, despite the sad period, it has been valued as it deserves. Important infrastructures built, others still more important under construction. Well done

Congratulations on how the city is organized. A beautiful municipal parking also suitable for campers a few hundred meters from the historic center. Practically pedestrian center, very clean and well cared for. We went there almost by chance and we are very happy with the experience!

Martina Franca City of the Baroque. Martina Franca, city of the Valle d'Itria Festival. Martina Franca city of culture. It took more than 700 years to make Martina the happy island located in the heart of Puglia, there in the Itria Valley, the cradle of people who found refuge from persecution. Like the Basilian monks who, in the ninth century, fled from the north of Africa, taking their cults with them, including those of San Nicola and Madonna dell’Odegitria, the first pictorial representation of San Luca della Madonna. Because precisely where the convent of Sant’Antonio dei Cappuccini now stands, they painted this Madonna, thus giving the first traces of the name that identifies this Valley. Because when Philip II of Anjou, on 12 August 1310, decided to build a new city where the Castrum Martinae was located, located in the current block of Montedoro, a military outpost of the city of Taranto, opposed to that of Monopoli coinciding with the Bell tower of the current Collegiate Church of San Martino, gave new life to an already populated territory, offering franchises and advantages to those who were settled there. That territory gave the opportunity to enjoy free use of state-owned lands, among which the current Parco delle Pianelle stands out, now a protected regional reserve, which has always been a refuge for unique fauna and flora. When Martina Franca was created, it surrounded itself with walls, five access gates and 24 towers, 12 square and 12 round. Wealth was based on the entrepreneurial sense of an agrarian bourgeoisie, which produced from the land, from pastoralism and from the enhancement of agriculture, the cultural basis with which it created its vocation for beauty. However, only with the seventeenth century the city, opening up, knew its development with the construction of the Ducal Palace by Petracone V, followed by the sumptuous palaces such as Palazzo Martucci, Palazzo Magli, Palazzo Fanelli, just to name a few, from the Chiesa del Carmine and the Collegiate Church of San Martino. The historic center rose to the sky through the Baroque, decorated by the local workers of the white powder, and by painters and sculptors who came from all over Puglia, such as Stefano da Putignano, Caramia, Olivieri, Carella, De Matteis and De Mauro. Devotion becomes dedication in the numerous brotherhoods, which grouped belonging and the need to create community through the religious sense. For this reason, every weekend in the summer there is still at least one procession in the historic center of Martina Franca, to give the right value to the sense of charity and help. Charity and help that see the construction of the hospital by the will of Friar Cappellari, their most sincere value, to give a home to abandoned children. Just get lost in the streets of the historic center for each stone to tell a unique story. A stroll through the rich constellation of rural districts is enough to measure the profound link between land, landscape and beauty that make this city so fascinating.

The municipality of Martina Franca is located inside the Palazzo Ducale. By "clearing" the city and bureaucratic issues, it is a monument of certain historical and architectural interest. It is home to the very famous festival of the Itria valley, as well as to very important cultural events such as the Picasso exhibition in this period.

Bad service in the registry department. Rude and bossy employees who take advantage of their administrative position. I witnessed scenes of screaming and mistreating elderly people and two nuns and me personally and my mom who were waiting. Out of respect for my mother I have been quiet.