I get asked about a lot of things from behind the wheel — best gelato in Florence, whether the train really is faster than driving, what time the Vatican gets crowded. But nothing gets a client leaning forward in their seat quite like this one: from September 25 to 27, 2026, Polignano a Mare hosts the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series for the thirteenth year running, and it’s one of the strangest, most thrilling things you can watch in Italy.
I’ll be upfront about something before I go further. Polignano a Mare sits in Puglia, on the Adriatic side of the boot, a good five hours south of Rome by road. It’s outside the ground I usually cover with clients. But I get enough questions about it — usually from people already planning a longer swing through the south, Matera included — that I wanted to put together a proper guide. So here’s what I know about the event, the town, and what’s worth doing while you’re down there.
Why divers keep coming back to this one town
Every stop on the Red Bull Cliff Diving calendar has its own character, but Polignano a Mare is the one athletes and fans both talk about differently. The competition has run here every year since 2009, and 2026 marks its thirteenth edition in the town — a record no other stop on the circuit can match. Men dive from 27 metres, women from 21, launching out over a narrow inlet called Lama Monachile, where the water sits an impossibly deep turquoise between two limestone cliff walls.
What makes it strange, in the best way, is the setup. One of the diving platforms is built onto the balcony of an actual private house, cut straight into the cliff face. Divers walk through someone’s living room to get to their launch point. The whole town becomes part of the show — spectators pack the arched bridge, the beach below, every balcony and rooftop with a sightline, and the athletes wade back through the crowd between dives, slapping hands with the people who came to watch.
It’s free to watch from most public vantage points, though the best spots fill up hours before the first dive, especially on finals day. If you can’t be there in person, Red Bull streams the event live, with the main sessions typically running in the early afternoon local time.
What to do once the dives are over
Polignano itself rewards a slow wander — Lama Monachile beach, the old town’s white lanes, and a coffee at one of the clifftop bars overlooking the Adriatic. But the real appeal of being in this corner of Puglia is everything within easy reach:
Alberobello is maybe forty-five minutes inland, and it’s genuinely unlike anywhere else in Italy — an entire district of cone-roofed trulli houses, built without mortar so they could be dismantled if the tax collector came calling. Ostuni, the “white city,” sits on a hilltop surrounded by olive groves, its whitewashed streets built to be walked rather than driven. Monopoli, just down the coast, has a working fishing harbor and a lot less foot traffic than Polignano, which makes it a nice place to slow down for lunch. Locorotondo and Cisternino round out the inland loop if you’ve got a full day to spare, both worth it for the countryside views alone.
And then there’s Matera, about an hour to ninety minutes inland — one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world, its Sassi districts carved directly into the rock. It’s a different region technically, Basilicata rather than Puglia, but nobody visiting this part of Italy treats it as a detour. It’s usually the whole point.
Getting around this part of Italy
This is where I’ll be straight with you rather than pretend otherwise. Rome City Transfers is built around Rome — Fiumicino, Ciampino, Civitavecchia, and the routes radiating out toward Tuscany, Umbria, and Campania. Puglia sits well beyond our usual radius, and I don’t want to promise a set-price pickup in Polignano a Mare when that’s not something we run day to day.
What I can tell you is that if your trip already has you heading toward Matera, that’s genuinely within reach of what we do, and it puts you within an hour or so of Polignano a Mare for the final stretch. A number of clients have used the Matera leg as the jumping-off point for exactly this kind of extended trip south. If that sounds like your plan, get in touch on WhatsApp and I’ll see what we can put together for the long-distance stretch — it won’t be a fixed online rate, but I’d rather work out something honest with you directly than quote a number that doesn’t hold up.
A few things people usually ask me
Do I need tickets to watch the dives? No — most vantage points around Polignano a Mare are free and open to the public. Arrive early if you want a clear view of the main platform, particularly for the Sunday finals.
What’s the closest airport? Bari, roughly thirty-five minutes away by car, handles the most direct flights into the region.
Is Polignano a Mare doable as a day trip from Matera? Yes, easily. It’s about an hour to ninety minutes each way, and plenty of visitors base themselves in one town and day-trip to the other.
Can Rome City Transfers pick me up in Puglia? Not as a standard route — this sits outside our regular service area. If your itinerary connects through Matera or further north, message us on WhatsApp and we’ll talk through what’s realistic.
If you’re building a longer trip through southern Italy and want to talk through the logistics — where we can genuinely help and where you’re better off with a local driver — reach out on WhatsApp at +39 333 2831963, or take a look at the booking page to see what we cover.