Alberobello, Puglia

Alberobello is famous for Trulli Homes (singular is Trullo), the ones in the back of the picture above with conical shaped roofs.  These are limestone dwellings with mortarless, or dry-stacked, boulders with conical roofs built up of corbelled limestone slabs. I had to look up what Corbel means: "Corbel, in architecture, is a bracket or weight-carrying member, built deeply into the wall so that the pressure on its embedded portion counteracts any tendency to overturn or fall outward."  The rock is plentiful here in Apulia so the resources are just lying around. One theory of why these were built in this way is property taxation back in the day.  The houses could be dismantled easily before the tax inspectors came and then rebuilt after they left.  These were primarily built beginning in the 1800's and all the way up to the 20th century.  It began to be too expensive to build them when the cost of labor rose in the 20th century (lots of rock hauling). You can see a lot of dry stone masonry all over Puglia as instead of fences here, property parcels are separated by dry- stack stone walls. 

You can see by the height of the door next to Bud, he would have trouble living in one of these older versions of Trullo! 

Above is an example of a trullo that has been somewhat modernized and is for sale.  The houses you see in these pictures are mostly all being used as residences.  How would you like to live where people are constantly walking by to see your house?  The symbols on the roofs of the houses in one of the above pictures are supposed to ward off bad luck.

We stopped for a drink in one of the Trulli houses and went into the back yard to sit on the short wall in back.  We found this fig tree.  It is hard to see but the trunk is pretty big and it is bent into a backwards "C".  I think it was looking for light. Many of the homes sell souvenirs, typical meats and wine or other things our of their front door.  This towns was so full of people that I was really pretty uncomfortable.  Having spent 2 meters apart from nearly everyone for over a year, it is difficult to go somewhere and have people actually brush into you.  Few people were wearing a mask.  It was extremely hot this day.  I did wear one and walking up the hills and for miles around the town, we finally said "let's just get lunch and then leave".

Bud was in heaven that we found a brew pub in Alberobello!  We actually ate inside (air conditioned) and for a bit we were the only ones there.  It filled up fast though. One thing about Italy, everyone has a short period to eat for lunch because the restaurants are only open from noon to three (and Italians do linger over a meal).  So, even if you are not yet hungry at noon, if you are in a touristy place, you better find a spot and get a table or else you will go hungry and dinner does not start until 7 or 8 pm here.  Bud had a pizza with oil base, DOC Bufala mozzarella, fresh turkey, pistachio and grated lime.  I had tomato sauce, bufala mozzarella, prosciutto, and fresh basil.  They were both pretty good.  I can never eat more than half even though the crust is incredibly light.