Alberobello is a town in Italy’s Apulia region. It’s known for its trulli, whitewashed stone huts with conical roofs. The hilltop Rione Monti district has hundreds of them. The 18th-century Trullo Sovrano is a 2-level trulli.
Map and symbol narration of the symbols found on rhe roof.
Drove on the coach to Alberobello where we saw the white washed houses with black pointy roof made out of what looked like slates. Legend goes that the king imposed taxes based on the roof so when tax collecter arrived all the rooftops were dismantled and so noo taxes were ever paid.
Siamese truli symbolising 2 brothers that loved the same woman.
White washing the buildings helped to stop the black plague in the area as the wash has anti bacteria properties. The thick 1.5m walls and few, small windows maintains the inside cool in summer and warm in winter.
St. Antony's Church is a greek cross shaped church built on the toponym of "Rione Monti's" district, unique of his kind because it's entirely made by trulli. The construction is recent, it was built in 1927. The contrast between the new and "improved" northern side of the city and the "poorer" southern side, entirely made of trulli, was once really strong. To avoid the "discomfort" of the southern citizens to follow the Mass into a distant and "bourgeois" church, the local parish took the initiative to build a new church for the poor district of the town. In fact, in that district, since the declaration of the area as National Monument in 1910, it was forbidden to build any other kind of buildings in except trulli, so it was considered the poor neighborhood of the town. During the years between II World War and the '80's, the common idea of the trullo as a symbol of poverty and backwardness became null and void. Hundreds of trulli located outside the protected areas were destroyed, to be replaced be "modern" buildings. Entire blocks around the St. Medics church end in the north-eastern side of the town, once entirely made of trulli have been destroyed.
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