There is a version of the Italian summer everyone books, and a better one almost no one does. The first is the Amalfi Coast in August -- extraordinary, and now so crowded that the drive from Sorrento to Positano can take longer than the flight from London.

The second is Puglia. Same warm sea, the same long dinners, but at half the density and a fraction of the friction. You trade the vertical drama of the cliffs for something lower and older: whitewashed towns, olive groves to the horizon, and masserie you can actually live in.

Honesty first -- Puglia has no Positano. There is no single postcard view that stops a room. If the photograph is the point of your trip, book the Amalfi Coast and make your peace with the crowds.

Puglia rewards the traveller who wants August without the crush.

Space, mostly. A trullo estate on its own land, a stone-cut pool, a chef who comes to the house. Ostuni ten minutes away for dinner, a coastline that stays warm into October, and the sense -- increasingly rare on the Italian coast -- that you have found something rather than queued for it.

The case for Puglia over the Amalfi Coast this August

Most villa kitchens are designed to be looked at. A handful are designed to be cooked in -- and in those houses, the smartest money you spend all week is on a private chef.

Look for a second prep sink, a proper range rather than a domestic four-ring, and counter space that does not vanish the moment two people are working. If the photographs only show the island styled with a bowl of lemons, ask for a picture of the working side.

In the right house, the kitchen is the reason to come.

Where the kitchen earns it, a chef changes the whole shape of the week: no restaurant bookings, no drive home, no one missing the sunset because they are watching a pan. You eat where you are staying, which on the Mediterranean is the entire point.

Nine villa kitchens worth booking a chef for

A villa listing is a sales document, and like any sales document it is built as much on omission as on claim. Once you know what is missing, you can read one in about ninety seconds.

Count the exterior shots taken from the same corner. One hero angle, repeated, usually means the other angles are less flattering -- a road, a neighbour, a retaining wall. Ask for a short video walk from the gate to the pool. What the owner films casually tells you more than what the agency shot on a drone at golden hour.

"Moments from the sea" is a distance measured in optimism, not metres.

Trust nouns, distrust adverbs. "Five bedrooms" is a fact; "effortlessly stylish" is a mood. And always ask the two questions the listing will not answer: how loud is it at night, and what is the walk back up the hill after dinner.

Field notes