Alberobello
Alberobello is defined by its cluster of cone‑capped stone houses called trulli, which dominate the town’s skyline and give the settlement its unmistakable silhouette. The small town lies in the Metropolitan City of Bari, in the Apulia region of southern Italy, and its 10,237 residents (2022) live among these dry‑stone structures. Recognised as one of I Borghi più belli d’Italia, the place draws visitors who come to walk through a living museum of vernacular architecture.
The town grew on the former course of the river Cana, now traced by Largo Giuseppe Martelotta, the main street that winds through the historic centre. The surrounding karst landscape supplies abundant calcareous limestone, a material that shaped the early houses when Count Giangirolamo II ordered construction without mortar to reduce tax liability to the Spanish Viceroy. This requirement produced the characteristic drystone walls that support each trullo’s conical roof, a technique that began with an inn, a tavern and an oratory erected in 1635. The layout follows the original settlement pattern of about forty peasant families granted land by Count Andrea Matteo III Acquaviva d’Aragona in the early sixteenth century.
All of Alberobello’s trulli form a single, inhabited district, a status that earned the ensemble UNESCO World Heritage designation in 1996 and cemented the town’s role as the cultural capital of the Itria Valley’s trulli. Walking the narrow lanes, visitors encounter rows of white‑washed cones that have been continuously inhabited for centuries, making Alberobello the only living community whose entire historic core consists of UNESCO‑listed trulli.
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