You’ll probably have your first sight of it while driving along Puglia’s coastal motorway – a glorified dual carriageway, quaintly lined down its central reservation with nodding oleanders. Your eye will be drawn inland by the high, level-topped Murge plateau rising starkly from the pancake-flat littoral. And there on a little pinnacle, you’ll spy a tumbling pile of white and cream brightly lit by the sun.

You won’t know what it is at first. Some sort of quarry? A huge marble monument? When you realize it’s a settlement, it quickly takes on a fairytale aura – a mythical white city seen from afar, possibly a mirage. It grows ever larger and whiter on the landscape – and no less enchanted-looking – as you leave the tiny motorway and approach it along country roads flanked by hundreds of stout olive trees.