Part VIII
34
One sees a great number of dry-stone cabins made of limestone or tufa,
scattered over the countryside. They are called trulli... lodgings for
beasts and country people.
Galanti, “Della descrizione geographica e politica delle Sicilie”
THE MURGIA DEI TRULLI is famous for strange, bee-hive shaped houses, the trulli, and for horses. Despite the area’s lush appearance, it has a bitter history of poverty and outlawry, thankfully long over.
Alberobello, which takes its name from Sylva Arboris Belli (the wood of fine trees) has over a thousand trulli in the old quarter. They also appear around Ceglie Messapico, Cisternino, Martina Franca and Locorotondo, each district having its own version of the basic design – a cone of stones built without mortar. The historian Guelfo Civinino claims that trulli are identical to the specchie of the Messapians which, besides being burial chambers, were used for religious rites.
The Murgia dei Trulli was once heavily forested, an ideal refuge for brigands, which may explain why early travellers avoided the area. The woods were not cleared until the twentieth century, to make way for vineyards and orchards. Nowadays the Val d’ Itria is like a garden, with an unmistakable air of prosperity, but it was very different a hundred years ago. “Their poverty may be imagined by the food of the day labourers, polenta made of boiled beans” says Mrs. Ross, describing the trulli people.
The inhabitants of some of the towns on the Murge eat “la farinella” (pounded maize, peas, chestnuts, &c., which have first been roasted in ovens), which they eat just as it is, never attempting to cook it. These towns, Noci, Albaribello &c., are called by the others “Paese di Farinella”, to indicate their poverty.
Even if overrun by trippers, Alberobello is well worth seeing. Selva, as it was first called, was given to the Counts of Conversano in the fifteenth century as a reward for fighting the Turks, and became part of estates that stretched from Putignano to within five miles of Martina Franca. Since Selva was uninhabited and uncultivated, the Counts encouraged labourers to settle there, living in rough wooden huts. In 1550 Count Giovanni Antonio gave them leave to build in stone, for protection against the wind, but without mortar. This meant that each house could be quickly pulled down before a tax collector arrived to count the dwellings – and quickly rebuilt after his departure. In 1635, when enough trees had been cleared and sufficient land cultivated, a town was founded by the fearsome Count Giangirolamo II, who built an inn, a mill and a communal oven for the labourers, charging them heavily for the compulsory use of these facilities.
The first trulli were very like the stone huts called caselle that are seen in every olive grove. Without any windows or chimneys, they had square bases and conical roofs, and often a spiralling outside staircase. According to Civinino, this was the ladder Messapian priests climbed to worship the stars. The only light came through the open door. In many ways such houses were less sophisticated than the cave dwellings of the ravines, but they were very much healthier; dry all the year round, cool in summer and warm in winter. Probably they did not improve in design until the end of feudalism at Selva in 1797, since with a constant threat of demolition there was too little incentive.
Then the trulli gradually became much more elaborate, with a small window and a tall chimney. As a family grew, more cones were added. The walls were white-washed inside and out, but the roofs were usually left unpainted, save for a large cross, swastika or heart, magic charms to ward off evil. A cistern was dug for rain-water coming off the roof, the sole water supply. Beds were placed in alcoves round the main living room, while an attic reached by a ladder held flour, dried pulses, fruit and firewood.
Conventional houses began to be built with mortar after 1797, but many peasants still preferred the trulli either because they were poor or simply because “what was good enough for my father is good enough for me.” As late as the 1920s a church was built at Alberobello in the trulli style.
The original church here, a tiny edifice built by the peasants on land given to them by the Count, was served by a priest from Martina Franca, who rode out on his donkey to celebrate Mass each Sunday. Giangirolamo II endowed an oratory next to a house he had built for his visits to the town, placing in it a painting of the saints to whom it was dedicated, Cosmas and Damian. When he was packed off to a Spanish prison, the peasants moved it to their own church. Since then the town has been devoted to the two saints. During the terrible drought of 1782, a statue of San Cosma was borne in procession through the streets of Selva with immediate results, a downpour falling out of a cloudless sky.
The last feudal lord of Selva, Count Giulio Antonio IV, Gentleman of the King’s Bedchamber and Knight of San Gennaro, was hand-in-glove with the brigands who terrorised the little town. Eventually, in desperation, its long suffering inhabitants sent a deputation to King Ferdinand when he was staying at Tàranto with Archbishop Capecelatro, a well-known foe to brigands, petitioning that their town should be administered by the Crown. The petition was granted in May 1797 and Selva renamed itself Alberobello.
In the centre of the Murgia dei Trulli, the round, gleaming white city of Locorotondo sits on a small hill. Unlike some of its neighbours, it is untouched by modern development, which has been diverted to a new town in the valley below. Locorotondo contains little of interest, apart from the church of Santa Maria della Greca, but there is a superb view of the Val d’ Itria from the public gardens at the top of the hill. Trulli can be seen in every direction, from single houses to great clusters forming masserie, from agedtrulliwith tiny orchards and hens scratching round the doors to brand-new trulli with wrought-iron gates and crazy-paving. Dry-stone walls divide the fields and, on either side of the valley, herds of silvery grey cattle and black Murgesi horses graze on the green hills.
Until quite recently, hundreds of big, pure black horses were imported to the Murgia from Calabria, Northern Italy, Albania and Montenegro. All they had in common was their colour and their amount of bone. However, during the 1920s they were glorified with the impressive new name of Murgesi. Such horses must not be confused with the Conversano horse, a far more glamorous beast. The Val d’Itria used also to be renowned for its donkeys, which when crossed with Murgesi horses produced exceptionally tough mules.
While the old woodmen of the Murgia dei Trulli and Selva have vanished, together with their dense forests, their odd little houses continue to be built. Some are bought as weekend cottages by business men from Bari, who no doubt fancy that they are returning to their roots.