i Trulli, Italy

Trulli of Alberobello, Puglia, Italy

The small little white structures dot the hillside, their conical stone roofs rising up above them. From a distance, looking across to the community of buildings, they seem like a mountain range spotted from the air. Rising ragged but with a system, they could be the Andes or the Alps. But these odd shapes are the work of man, not nature. They are called trulli (the plural of trullo), and they are the traditional residences of the town of Alberobello, here in the Italian region of Puglia. It was in the 1500s that the first of these trulli were built on this land. Archaeological evidence suggests there were only about 40 then but within a couple of centuries there were more than 3,500.