Puglia

Apulia


The Italian peninsula looks like a boot, and Puglia (Apulia) is the footstep of this boot. This region is about the same latitude as Naples, but on the eastern side of the mountains. Moderate rains in winter and very rare rain in summer make this area very dry, at the border semi-arid. Nevertheless, the area is fertile and mostly agricultural. Most of this region are plains, which are used for growing wine and olives. An important but poor part of the region is the Gargano peninsula, which is called the "spur" of Italy.

The Gargano and Murge karst plateaus are full of karst features, the most spectacular are not show caves, but some very large dolines. They are classified as KarstTiankeng, which means they have a diameter and depth greater than 100 m. However, if you define tiankengs as collapses of huge caverns, they are most likely not tiankengs, as they may have formed by multiple collapse and disintegration of a network of small caves or by paleokarst dissolution. We use the simpler definition only by size and classify them as tiankeng though. The largest is the Dolina Pozzatina on the Gargano with a diameter of 500 m, the Murge plateau has two very large dolines, each about 300 m in diameter. All are easy to reach, there are parking lots at the rim, we consider them as tourist sights. If you are in this part of Italy, you must see at least one of them.