2 May 2018
Breakfast in Matera
Did I mention how amazing Matera is? It was still amazing this morning. There aren’t many breakfast views more stunning than this. I took more photos. More and more. We finally left, to drive around the other side of the gorge and explore the rock-cut churches among the grass and wild flowers. Which gave me entirely different views of Matera to photograph. Dammit.
Honestly, by rights Matera should be absolutely rammed to the gills with dazzled tourists. I’m so glad that it’s not. One more fun fact about the town: during World War II, Matera was the first town in Italy to rise up and fight against the Wehrmacht.
Alberobello is also lovely, and is definitely more firmly on the tourist trail. There are at least three whole streets given over entirely to tourist shops. The unique feature here are the trulli – round stone houses with very hefty roofs of stacked up grey limestone slate, with bigger houses often involving three or more of these conical roofs merging from one to the other in a pleasingly organic way. You expect them to be the homes of an interesting species of gnome or goblin. But no, they can be perfectly comfortable human homes, as we can attest ‘cos we stayed in one!
Alberobello’s trulli
Trulli Holiday Resort has bought up and neatly converted old trulli scattered all over the town. The name they’ve picked is a bit unfortunate, because there’s nothing resort-like about it, they’re just a friendly and well-run company who rent out gnome homes all around Alberobello. The town has 1400 trulli in total, making it truly Puglia’s trulli epicenter. Otherwise you tend to see them scattered in little clusters around the countryside. They’re basically agricultural buildings. I’ve no idea at what point the townsfolk of Alberobello decided to bestow a massive tourism-fed inheritance upon their descendants by building an entire town out of them. The funny thing is, the very centre of town and the two main roads in and out are lined with “normal” buildings. Perfectly handsome whitewashed stone, but you could actually drive right through the town – past the church and town hall – and back out the other side without ever realising its sheer uniqueness.
Alberobello is on the tourist trail!
We fed ourselves today at two different wine bars. The first gave us a giant quantity of fresh burrata for a handful of euros, along with some top-notch local sweet wines. The second served us platters of wonderful cured meat, including the capocollo from Martina Franca, lovely local cheeses and tiny bruschetta, along with some excellent local white and red wines. Negroamaro is the local red grape, along with the punch Primitivo.
Trulli country
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