The Gargano's clifftop city — white chalk sea-stacks rising from the clearest Adriatic water, a medieval white old town on a limestone promontory, and Italy's longest beach on either side
Vieste sits on the tip of Italy's 'spur' on the Gargano promontory — a medieval white town perched on chalk cliffs above some of the clearest water on the Adriatic. The Pizzomunno monolith, a 25-metre sea-stack of white chalk rising from the sea directly below the town, is the city's emblem. The beaches of the Gargano — particularly the dramatic bays of Baia di Campi and Baia di Pugnochiuso cut into white cliffs — are the finest in mainland Puglia.
Vieste's rock has been inhabited since the Neolithic period. The town became a significant Byzantine stronghold during the wars between Byzantium and the Lombards in the 6th-8th centuries. The Swabian emperor Frederick II built a fortress here in 1240 as part of his Gargano coastal defence network. The town suffered a devastating Ottoman raid in 1554 in which 7,000 inhabitants were killed or enslaved — an event known locally as the 'Turkish massacre' and commemorated by a shrine of bones, the chianca amara, embedded in the cathedral wall.