Museo del Vino

Located in a 16th-century Apulian cellar in Altamura’s historic center, Museo del Vino showcases ancient winemaking tools and offers guided tours with wine tastings.

Planning your visit

Altamura in Puglia sits in the Murgia, a limestone plateau of stone walls, sheep and wheat, and it is best known for two things: bread, made to a protected designation and traditionally baked in communal wood ovens, and the Altamura Man, a Neanderthal skeleton found fused into a cave wall by calcite.

The Museo del Vino occupies a sixteenth-century cellar cut into the rock beneath the old town, and the space itself is the primary exhibit — vaulted, cool and carved out below street level, of the kind that made wine production possible before refrigeration. Ancient tools fill it: presses, barrels, vats, measuring vessels, cooper's equipment and the implements of vine cultivation.

Puglia produces enormous quantities of wine and has moved in recent decades from bulk production toward quality, with primitivo and negroamaro leading the change.

Tastings accompany guided visits and are the point of going.

Bookable options are guided tours with tasting included. Current availability is listed below.