The fullest arc of the south in a week — from the Bay of Naples across to the trulli and the golden baroque of Lecce.
Your driver meets you at Naples airport and brings you south to Sorrento. Once you've settled in, the day eases into its first pleasure: a late-afternoon cooking class, hands in the flour, learning a Sorrentine dish or two before sitting down to eat what you've made. It's a warm, low-key welcome — a way to arrive properly, meet the food of the region on the first evening, and let the journey begin at the table.
Overnight · SorrentoA private guide walks you through Pompeii — the streets, the villas, the forum frozen at the moment Vesuvius erupted. In the afternoon you travel into Naples to its Archaeological Museum, home to the mosaics, bronzes and everyday objects recovered from the buried city. The two halves belong together: you stand where it happened, then see what was saved. By evening you are back in Sorrento, the ancient world still vivid in mind.
Overnight · SorrentoA private boat carries you out to Capri across the bay. You round the island at leisure — the Faraglioni stacks, hidden grottoes, water in every shade of blue — pausing to swim where the coves are quiet. Ashore there's time for the Piazzetta, a funicular ride, or lunch above the harbour before you drift back to Sorrento by sea in the golden late afternoon. A day given entirely to the island and its water.
Overnight · SorrentoA last coastal morning: a private drive to Positano, clinging to its cliff, and up to Ravello with its gardens suspended over the sea. Then your driver brings you to Naples for the new direct train to Bari, crossing the peninsula in a few easy hours. Waiting on arrival, a driver takes you into the Itria Valley of trulli and olive groves, where you settle into a masseria for the nights ahead.
Overnight · Valle d'ItriaInto Basilicata today, to Matera and its Sassi — the cave-dwellings carved into a limestone ravine and lived in for thousands of years. Your guide leads you through the ancient quarters and into rock churches still holding their frescoes, out to viewpoints over a canyon of biblical severity. After a leisurely local lunch you return to the green calm of the Itria Valley, two very different faces of the south seen in a single day.
Overnight · Valle d'ItriaYou begin at a valley dairy, where a cheesemaker shows you how burrata is made and you taste it fresh from the hands that pulled it. Then a scenic transfer toward Lecce: a stop at Polignano a Mare, perched on its sea-cliff above the Adriatic, and at Ostuni, the White City, its lanes climbing to a cathedral above a plain of olives. By evening you reach Lecce, the baroque capital of the Salento.
Overnight · LecceA day in Lecce with a local guide — the ‘Florence of the South,’ built entirely from the soft golden stone that let its baroque carvers run riot. You walk from the Roman amphitheatre in Piazza Sant'Oronzo to the extravagant façade of Santa Croce and the elegant Piazza del Duomo, learning to read the papier-mâché saints and stone-lace balconies. The afternoon is free for cafés, artisan workshops and the slow evening passeggiata.
Overnight · LecceA final Salento breakfast before your driver takes you north to Bari airport for your onward flight. You leave having travelled the whole arc of the south — from Sorrento's bay and Capri's blue, across the peninsula by rail, through the trulli of the Itria Valley to the golden baroque of Lecce. Three regions, two coasts, one seamless line joining them, and the unhurried pace of a journey designed to be lived, not rushed.
Fly home from BariThis is a sample programme — fully private and ready to tailor around your clients' dates, pace and taste. Arrivals into Naples, departures from Bari.
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