The south of Italy and the regions of Basilicata and Puglia in particular, form a hotbed of backgrounds for Italian high-end car commercials. The landscapes are compelling, the roads nearly devoid of automobiles. The Lamborghini of your dreams can let out all its horses.
Slow travel? Nah, keep your SUV dreamboats in the second garage. If you want a fast travelogue, you need one of those exotic, hand bashed, low-to-the-tarmac Italian beauties Chinese factories have yet to find a way to make cheap. In this case we’ll call on our trusty Lamborghini Huracán Performante Spyder. Let’s start right away with a plot twist foisted upon the viewer as sun reflects off the limestone architecture in the Piazza del Duomo in Lecce. Then we’ll roar down the coastal road that links Otranto to the port of Santa Maria di Leuca at the southern edge of the Salento, one of the prettiest drives in Italy.
Just in case you missed it, the travelogue snakes growlingly past what is considered by many expert beach bums to be the top beach in Puglia: Porto Badisco.
Just up the coast, Otranto attracts visitors from further afield with the elaborate mosaics in its 12th-century cathedral. Most content themselves with a stroll along the town’s large waterfront area. Very few make it the short distance down to Porto Badisco, meaning that the little bay is frequented almost entirely by locals. — Best beaches in Puglia, Italy: Porto Badisco, Otranto
I can’t help thinking that the video commercial reflects that bittersweet quality that appears frequently in Italian cuisine. As the world concentrates on building ever cheaper crap for workers toiling for ever smaller rewards, Italy can’t help but admire tragically the finely crafted object of their great affection, whether it’s the “terrible beauty” of its great cities and rural environments, or in the cars, scooters, and leaded crystal still made by artisans when the rest of the world’s cheap crap will do the job just as well.
I, for one, will rue the day the Italians catch up to the rest of the world.