Alberobello Culture

Alberobello's culture is unusually concentrated in one thing — a way of building — and in the religious calendar around it.

The trullari

The craft of laying a corbelled dome without mortar has never entirely died here. There are still builders who can raise a trullo and, more importantly, repair one, and the maintenance of fifteen hundred dry-stone roofs is a continuing local trade rather than a heritage demonstration. Dry-stone walling in general was recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage in 2018.

The roof symbols

Many cones in Rione Monti carry a symbol painted on the stone in lime — crosses and monograms, hearts, crescents, zodiacal and other marks. They are usually explained as protective or devotional. What they actually meant, and how old the practice is, is genuinely unclear, and a good deal of what is told to visitors about them is invention.

Living in one cone

A trullo was a one-room house, and the domestic arrangements followed from that. Beds went into alcoves cut back into the thickness of the wall and curtained off; the hearth stood against one side with a flue through the cone; storage went up into the dome above head height, and the cistern was under the floor. Families were large and the room was not, and in bad weather animals came in too. The cool, dim, thick-walled interior visitors admire in summer was a winter problem for the people who lived in it.

The Santi Medici

Cosmas and Damian, physicians and martyrs, are the town's patrons, and their feast at the end of September is the biggest occasion of the year.

The Valle d'Itria table

Local cooking is plateau food rather than coastal: orecchiette, broad beans and chicory, bombette of rolled pork grilled over wood, capocollo from nearby Martina Franca, and the white wines of the valley.