A museum in a trullo sounds like a joke, but the Museo Storico in this part of Apulia belongs to a landscape where almost everything is a stone cone, and it makes sense to treat it as the doorway to the countryside rather than a single building. The ride this point belongs to leads north-west to Castel del Monte, the strange octagonal castle that the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II raised on a hill in the thirteenth century, with eight towers and no moat, no drawbridge and no obvious military purpose.
The route crosses the Murge, the limestone upland that forms the heel of Italy's spine, where the soil is thin and red and the land is a patchwork of stone walls. This is a karst country: rain disappears underground, so there are few rivers and plenty of caves, and the farmers built the dry-stone walls from the stones they cleared from their fields. Olive trees, some of them centuries old, spread their silver crowns over the fields, and almond blossom in February turns the slopes white.
Riding here rewards a slow pace. The roads are mostly well maintained but narrow, and farm machinery can come around any bend. Villages such as Locorotondo, Cisternino and Martina Franca have steep, whitewashed lanes and baroque churches, and make good stops for coffee. The wind off the Adriatic can be strong, and the summer sun hits hard at midday, so plan the ride for morning and evening. Autumn brings the olive harvest and the first cool air, and is perhaps the best season.
Fuel is easy in this area, since Alberobello and Locorotondo are both towns of several thousand people with pumps along the main roads. Fill the tank before leaving the main valley if you are heading onto the Murge, where villages are further apart.
If you can, finish the day with a plate of orecchiette and a glass of Primitivo in the Itria valley. Frederick would have liked it, since he was a man who enjoyed hunting, falcons and a good table.