The next day we head off to Alberobello, the town of the Trulli.
I always worry about parking in these small towns, you usually end up outside the town in car parks that you pay a lot for but here, we park in someone’s backyard full of ancient olives and cherry trees for a small fee and pay a euro for a bag of freshly picked cherries.
The town is crowded. We came here with my late husband many years ago when it was quieter and we stayed in a trulli, the little round stone houses that people built to avoid the tax collector. These round houses could be built up and dismantled fairly easily when the tax man arrived and he would find a pile of stones.
We wandered and found a beautiful art gallery and bought tiny ceramic scenes of the trulli that were then fired in the raku method in a pit fire, the colours are gorgeous, bronzed and coppery. There are cute shops everywhere.
Then we lunch at a restaurant fronted by an eccentric man, sporting an apron of cherries, a rainbow scarf and Italian flag coloured braces. Whatever the food is like, we have to go there. But it was good, an appetiser of foccacia with sweet tomatoes and a platter of prosciutto and the famous Pugliese burratas (this is where they come from) and sweet sun dried tomatoes.
We walk out into the quietened streets as people have disappeared for lunch, the whitewashed walls of the buildings are so bright against the dense blue sky. On some of the buildings are the different symbols that were used to ward off demons and bring good luck. They do beautiful cotton loomwork here as well.
On our way home we stop by a field with a lone trulli in the middle, surrounded by swaying late summer grasses. Italy is full of diverse yet distinctive architecture, fascinating.
And then we get very lost on our way back to Matera. We go from a proper road to a very improper road leading to farmland which gets narrower and narrower until we see a sign pointed to The Crypt of the Living Dead! And although we'd really like to check it out, we have a tour booked in Matera (see previous post) so I do a five point turn and head back in the right direction.
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