10 September 2023 Alberobello on Our Way to Lecce Blog

 

10 September 2023   Alberobello on Our Way to Lecce Blog

This morning we left Matera and traveled by bus to our next overnight stop – the city of Lecce.  About 1 ½ hours into the trip we stopped at the beautiful town of Alberobello.

While at first glance Alberobello (which means “beautiful tree”) seems like many other small Italian cities – narrow , hilly streets with white houses, it is one of the more unique and whimsical little towns we have seen.  But these houses are different.  They are called trulli (the Greek word for dome) – little white huts with conical roofs made of white thick limestone using a drywall (mortarless) construction.  The roofs’ steeply angled cones are made up of smaller limestone bricks.  It is like walking into a fairy tale with fairies and elves or looking at the little hobbit homes of the Lord of the Rings (only they were more colorful).  While the homes can be both cylindrical or square, most in the town of Alberobello are square.  In the town are over 1500 trulli homes. 

This type of construction was first used around the 14^th century and is still in use today.  Originally, they were built this way to deceive the tax collector.  When the tax collector came from Naples, the residents just dismantled their homes and thus avoided paying taxes (or a tribute to the King of Naples) on their homes.  Many of the roofs also have Christian, pagan, or primitive or magical symbols painted on them to ward off the demons and bring the residents good luck.  They may also have a decorative sandstone pinnacles on their roofs that represent the signature of the “master trullaro” (or stone mason) who built the house.  We stopped at one of the trulli homes that is a workshop/store and whose owner is an 80+ year old woman.  She sells little ceramic figurines and whistles and also a line of linen that she and her workers make by hand and use only natural colors in their dyes.  The linen towels were so soft compared to the linen towels that have been imported from China.

Trulli Home

One of the streets of Trulli homes

Trulli homes decorated with roof symbols

Original door of woman's workshop

Ceiling of the Trulli workshop

Roofs of Trulli Homes

Linens for sale inside the workshop

Some of the rooftop decorations you see on the houses 

We then drove to a local olive oil farm where we learned about the process of making olive oil by the farm’s owner.  It is a family run business and produces some of the best Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  After a quick walk through the machines used for making the oil – they were in pristine condition as they were getting ready to produce the olive oil from this years olives.  The normal production time is from October to April.  We then had an olive oil tasting of some of the varieties of oil that they produce.  One of the more unique ones was the tangerine olive oil.  They are also the farm that makes some of their olive oil without using the pits.  They also make a line of skin care products from the oil but it was a very heavy face cream.  The leftover skins from the oils are fed to their livestock.

Machine that mashes the olives

Filters used to capture the dregs of the olives

The first olive oil to appear is captured and bottled immediately

Allowing olive oil to separate from water

Garden of the Olive Oil Factory

Our Olive Oil Tasting

This was followed by a brief stop in the town of Ostuni, also referred to as La Citta Bianca (the White City).  This is a city that you see long before you get there with its gleaming white buildings set atop of a hill overlooking the Adriatic Sea and surrounded by a forest of olive trees.  White lime had been used since the Middle Ages as it was readily available and made the historic center of the town seem much lighter.  They also believed that lime was a way to prevent the spread of the plague in the 17^th century.  It is believed that the city’s origins date back 40,000 to 50,000 years ago when prehistoric hunters lived in huts built into caves.  The skeleton of a pregnant woman who lived about 25,000 years ago was discovered in a nearby cave.  Although inhabited by Messapi, Lombards and the Romans, it was under the Spanish rule in the early 1500s that the city reached is economic and cultural peak.  In 1539 towers were built along the shoreline in anticipation of a Turkish assault.

It was here that we enjoyed a wonderful lunch of very fresh vegetables and pasta along with some very nice wines.  The restaurant which has been in operation since 1972 sits on top of a hill and has a beautiful view of the hillside.

A maize of narrow alleyways, dead ends, and small, beautiful flower gardens, it is hard to miss the wonderful ancient architecture.  While the town is still fortified by its city walls, it is the beautiful 15^th century Gothic Romanesque-Byzantine Cathedral that draws your attention, but in contrast to its surrounding white buildings, it stands as a beige capstone on the top of the hill.  From the outside you can view the rose window, an inverted gable, and on its façade, an intricate rose decoration.  We did not have time to visit the inside of the church as we had to meet our bus.

Restaurant where we had lunch

Inside the Restaurant

Looking out toward the Adriatic Sea

Main Piazza of Ostuni

Cathedral of Ostuni

Ostuni

Ostuni

Piazza in Ostuni

Ostuni, the White City on the Hill

We arrived in Lecce about 4 PM and checked into our hotel, the Hotel Risorgimento.  It had been a long travel day, but with many beautiful and unusual sights to see so it was going to be an early night for us.