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Home > Travel Italy > Italy Destinations > Gioia del Colle
Gioia del Colle
Italy, officially the Italian Republic or Repubblica Italiana, is a Southern European country comprising of the Po River valley, the Italian Peninsula and the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. It is shaped like a boot and for this reason Italians commonly call it lo Stivale, the boot or, due to its prevalent peninsular geographical nature, la Penisola, the Peninsula.
Gioia del Colle is a little town in the heart of Puglia, strategically located half way between the Ionian and Adriatic seas to the east and west, and between the cities of Bari and Taranto to the north and south. The City’s name comes from the legend of a Queen who, having found a cache of buried jewels, had them made into a necklace, thus giving Gioia its name of Jewels of the Neck.
Typical foods from the area include mozzarella cheese, for which Gioia is justly famous in producing some of the best tasting varieties you will find, red and white wines, extra virgin olive oil and orechiette and also pan-fried olives which have a taste not unlike aborigines. Surprisingly, Gioia is also the birthplace of the increasingly popular Primitive wine. Today, a host of small family owned businesses harvest, bottle and sell their own excellent private Primitive labels, many producing no more than 15,000 bottles a year.
Gioia also shares in the Puglian tradition of producing what is acknowledged to be some of the best olive oil in Italy, its quality attributed to the unique iron-rich soil of the land, the particular climate which sees dry summers and wet winters, and the long tradition of producing a product that unites advanced technology and equipment to centuries-old traditional methods of workmanship.
Gioia del Colle is an unassuming little town that has hidden depths and the real treasures that lie in its art and history, its simple people and genuine food and many family owned businesses that almost achieve the impossible in conveying within a bottle or in a typical dish, the love for the earth and it’s fruits and which ultimately makes Gioia del Colle a real jewel.
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