I was so impressed with Italian highways in the north and the west a few years ago and had assumed that all Italian highways were as good, but they must vary according to the wealth of the province. As soon as I left Venice the roads started showing some neglect. This area is poorer, I know, the farmers live here, and it is not as populated. But it might be more beautiful – hard to say – every area of Italy has its beauty – it is an incredibly diverse country, with mountains and plains and sea on both sides and that upheaval of snow-capped Alps I was so surprised so see the other day.
See photos and read the entire story Trulli Yours, which is dispatch #10.
But here there is a quiet, natural beauty and the rhythm of farming, the rhythm of nature and not of business. Fishing, olives, vegetables, grains, livestock, cheesemaking.
By noon I exited the highway at Gioia del Colle and felt to be in the heart of the farmland of Italy – fields of grain, more olive trees, some cows and a lot of burros, and the truilli, finally. Trulli is plural for trullo, a round house roofed with limestone slabs in a fishscale pattern (so the rain won’t get in) that are thought to have been built by tribes from the Middle East; some of them date from the Megalithic civiliziation. Thy’re capped with a decorative pinnacle, most of them in the shape of a sphere.
Inside, the doorways are typically arched, and the thick walls (three feet) carved into to make sleeping alcoves, fireplaces, and niches for this and that. The upper part is roofed off into a loft for storage.
The first trullo I passed was in the middle of a field of grain. The second was in a pasture of burros. The third was part of a fabulous villa. More and more truilli popped up as I approached Alberobello until I almost stopped noticing them, trying to follow directions to the TrulliHoliday office, where I had arranged to actually stay in one of these things.
