Alberobello and the Trulli, Up Close

Alberobello looks like nowhere else in Italy, or arguably anywhere else on earth. The town's trulli, small whitewashed stone buildings topped with conical roofs stacked from flat gray stones without mortar, exist in this concentration nowhere but the Valle d'Itria.

The construction technique is centuries old, and one theory holds it survived for a practical reason: dry stone buildings could be dismantled quickly if royal tax inspectors came counting permanent structures, since the feudal lords who controlled the area once taxed based on the number of established homes. True or embellished with time, it's the story everyone in town still tells.

Today, more than a thousand trulli remain clustered into two neighborhoods, Rione Monti and Rione Aia Piccola, and UNESCO recognized the whole area as a World Heritage Site decades ago. Most are still lived in, some now house small shops, and a few have been converted into places to actually spend the night, a very different experience than driving through for an afternoon.