On the heel of Italy’s boot, small stone huts with conical rock-covered roofs can be seen scattered among the olive trees. These are called trulli and can be found throughout the Itria Valley, where there are approximately 50,000 of them, especially in the town of Alberobello, where there are roughly 1,500 of them.
Some trulli stand alone, while others are clustered together along the town’s cobbled lanes transformed into residences, shops, restaurants and even boutique hotels. Today, the trulli of Alberobello are a Unesco World Heritage site.
Trulli are products of the Messapian culture which settled there during the Iron Age (1200-550 BCE). Although there is no clear consensus on when the first trulli were built, most sources agree the oldest are several thousand years old.
Trulli initially were built to serve as temporary field shelters for shepherds and animals,…
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