Trulli House Gallery

Trulli limestone houses at Alberobello

The trulli, the characteristic cone-roofed houses of Alberobello, Apulia, make up one of the 50 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Italy. The name derives from the late Greek word for dome in Italian, cupola and refers to the ancient stone houses with conical roofs, constructed with the abundant limestone from the plateau of Apulia s Murge zone.The archaeological finds that is, the first trulli settlements date as far back as the Bronze Age, while the trulli still extant today go back to c. 1350; the more uneven and shaky structures were destroyed and reconstructed (rather than repaired) time and time again.Legend has it that this dry wall construction, made without mortar, was imposed on the peasants of the area in the 15th Century, by their lords the Counts of Conversano, in order to evade an edict by the Kingdom of Naples that demanded tribute, or tax, on every new urban construction. Indeed, these types of settlements came to be identified as temporary and unstable, easy to demolish, and not taxable. The reality is, however, that the trulli are anything but unstable. Their internal structure, compact and without any elements of support or linkage, remains marvelously durable and, although seemingly so, primitive they are not

© dwayne miras photography

Alberobello, Apulia, Italy

The trulli , limestone dwellings found in the southern region of Puglia, are remarkable examples of drywall (mortarless) construction, a prehistoric building technique still in use in this region. The trulli are made of roughly worked limestone boulders collected from neighbouring fields. Characteristically, they feature pyramidal, domed or conical roofs built up of corbelled limestone slabs

© DanielaWhite images 2014

Italy, Puglia, Alberobello, stone roofs of Trulli houses

Typical architecture in Alberobello in Southern Italy. The houses have been proclaimed an International Human Resource by UNESCO

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