The district was built so that it could be knocked down in a morning. The Acquaviva d'Aragona counts made their peasants raise their houses in dry stone, without mortar, so that the Spanish viceroy's inspectors would find temporary shacks rather than a new settlement liable to tax. That fiscal dodge produced the 1,030 trulli of Rione Monti, the larger of the two Alberobello districts that UNESCO placed on the World Heritage list on 6 December 1996.
What to see
Eight almost parallel streets climb the slope, and every house is a bare limestone cone. The perimeter wall is double and dry-laid, as thick as an arm; the dome is a corbelled vault of concentric rings of chianche narrowing to a carved pinnacle, and outside the covering is of chiancarelle, thin slabs overlapped like scales that shed rain without a gram of cement. Many roofs carry a sign painted in lime: crosses, hearts, moons, luck marks that families repaint one generation after another.
At the top, in via Monte Pertica, the church of Sant'Antonio repeats the trullo shape at monumental scale: Greek-cross plan, a dome twenty-one metres high, a bell tower of 18.3 metres with six bells since 2018, interior decoration by Adolfo Ugo Rollo. It went up in little more than a year, between 25 March 1926 and 10 May 1927. Lower down stand the Trulli Siamesi, two cones welded together that share a wall and open onto two different streets.
Visiting
You climb from largo Martellotta, the road that separates the district from the modern centre: the stairways start there, and the full loop, up to the church and down a side lane, takes a good hour. There is no ticket and no opening time, because people live here; many trulli are shops, though, and several owners will let you up onto the roof terrace in exchange for a purchase or a tip. The paving is polished and steep, so wear closed shoes.
Our editors' tip
We go up at seven in the morning, before the shops open: the streets are empty, you hear only shutters and swifts, and the white cones against the low sky are worth the trip on their own. Then we cross to the other side, to Aia Piccola: 590 trulli, no window displays, washing on the lines and cats on the steps. That is the quarter where Alberobello actually lives, and it shows what Monti was before tourism.
