Behind the souvenir shops of Alberobello lies a story about taxes and kings that locals like to tell, and the Casa d'Amore is a handy place to start telling it. The house is one of the older buildings in the Rione Monti, the hillside quarter of conical trullo roofs, and it dates to the closing years of the eighteenth century. It is known as the first of the trulli to be built with mortar, and its interior now serves as a small exhibition with traditional furnishings and, as in many such houses, a tiny shop selling local crafts and wine.
The history behind these houses is a good one. The land here belonged to the counts of Conversano, who ruled their territory like a private kingdom. The tale says that when the Kingdom of Naples demanded a tax on every new settlement, the count ordered his tenants to build without mortar, so that a trullo could be pulled down whenever inspectors came and rebuilt after they left. The truth is probably more mixed, since stone shelters were simply the cheapest answer to a stony land. Either way, in 1797 the town got a royal charter from Ferdinand IV and the lords lost their hold, and after that the builders could use mortar and make houses of a more settled sort.
The roads around Alberobello are the right sort for a slow afternoon. From the Murge plateau, the land falls gently into the Itria valley, with red soil, walls of grey stone and ancient olive trees whose trunks twist like wrung cloth. You can wander along narrow farm roads, past dry-stone huts and small vineyards, with almost no traffic apart from tractors. Spring brings poppies and wild flowers, and the harvest in autumn smells of crushed grapes and smoke. Avoid the heat of July and August afternoons, when the stone reflects the sun and the town fills with coach parties.
Alberobello has about nine thousand people, so fuel, a bank machine and a decent lunch are easy to find. Locorotondo, a little north-east, has the better view and the better wine, and Martina Franca has the baroque squares and the local capocollo. If the souvenir shops drain your energy, step into a side alley and look up: the roof stones, the painted symbols and the chimneys make the place work again.