My favorite takes place during the Middle Ages. At the time, anyone erecting a dwelling on the King's land was taxed. The Pugliesi cleverly devised the dry stone Trullo solely for tax evasion. As the story goes, upon word (a smoke signal, perhaps?) of the revenuer's arrival, the Trulli were rapidly dismantled and moved or rebuilt afterwards. Nowadays, Trulli are firmly planted and buttressed with stucco. A cone still represents one room and the interiors, though charming, are spartan. With the exception of bathroom doors, rooms are separated by colorful curtains in sharp contrast to the stark whiteness within. Furnishings, mostly handmade in olive wood and quite beautiful by any standard, represent the art of peasants. The hearth remains the source of heat. Luckily, Puglia is fairly warm and the cool stone Trulli provide relief from the hot summer sun. In spite of the simplicity, the prices here are a bargain. Puglia, itself, is a bargain compared to most of Italy. Alberobello, the Trulli capital, is a fairy-tale city. Fanciful hex signs adorning each home add magic to the already bewitching scenery. A wealth of history, art, food and vistas, rivaling anything in Italy, await you. The people, unmercifully sweet, are generous to the bone. Maid service, bicycle rental, cooking classes and firewood can be easily arranged. Alberobello, located deep in the past, does have a train station and is within an hours' drive of Taranto, Bari or the sea.

Alberobello (A fairytale town)
Alberobello (420 m. above sea level) sprouts up on a wide relief cut in two by a depression produced by the action of an ancient water course. The surrounding landscape, rich in olive groves, vineyards and cherry orchards, offers carsic dolinas and terraced lands whose genesis is bend to tectonic phenomena. The configuration of the entire area is the result of erosive actions on the calcareous rocks produced by meteoric waters, on the surface as much as in the depth. From these stratificated rocks is drawn the building material used to covei the conic tops of the trulli, the so called "chiancarelle". The history of Alberobello is that of a small community of farmers which is grown up through two centuries from the end of the XIV century, in spite of the fact that they had no juridical recognition. Actually the local historians relate about the existence, already in the XV century, of an early nucleous of about 40 little circle-based dwellings having conic tops, scattered around on a woody land, quite surely prototypes of the tipical kind of building existing since a very long time in the so called "Silva Arbor Belli". The year 1654 marks a meaningful date for the birth of Alberobello, because it was in that year that the Count of "II Conversano Giangirolamo Acquaviva, catled "Guereza di Puglia", was forced to present to the royal Court of Justice appropriate justifications about the illegal dwellings in Alberobello, following a denouncement from the Duke of Martina. Giangirolamo, having previously known of a royal inspection, gave the order to demolish immediately most of the trulli existing at that time and ordered the inhabitants spread in the woods. The result of the inquiry was positive for the Count, who then recalled the farmers and authorized the re-building of the trulli with the severe obligation not to use any mortar or any other systematic building material, but houses built stone on stone. Only in 1797 seven members from the community were able to have a talk with King Ferdinando IV while was visiting the city of Taranto, in order to prospect the precarious juridical situation of their village and to ask the King the liberation from the feudal bondage and the recognition of Alberobello as a town royal to the Kingdom, that they gained with a royal decree on May 27" 1797.

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