Alberobello is famous for its trulli, the little whitewashed stone houses with grey conical roofs that look as if they belong in a children's book. They stand in thousands across the Itria valley in Puglia, but in the town of Alberobello they come in two dense clusters on opposite hillsides, and the quarter called Aia Piccola is the quieter of the two. It holds around four hundred trulli, climbing a gentle slope, and unlike its showier neighbour across the valley, it is still mostly residential, with washing on lines, geraniums in pots and the occasional shop selling local cheese and wine. UNESCO listed the town in 1996.
The trulli are built entirely of dry stone, without mortar, and the cone is a corbelled vault of flat limestone slabs laid in overlapping rings. The method is ancient, but the buildings in Alberobello mostly date from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. A popular story holds that they were built so that they could be quickly dismantled, to fool the tax collectors of the Kingdom of Naples, and whether or not it is true, it is a good story and the guides tell it with relish. Painted symbols on the roofs, some Christian and some older, add to the sense of mystery.
The countryside is the real reward for a rider. The roads of the Itria valley are quiet and gently curving, running between dry stone walls, olive groves, almond trees and vineyards, with whitewashed villages on the hilltops. Locorotondo, a circular town on a ridge, is a short ride away, and its white lanes and views over the valley are lovely. Martina Franca, with its baroque centre, is a bit further. The surfaces are generally good, though some minor roads are patchy and farm vehicles are slow. Midday in summer can be intensely hot, so ride in the morning or evening.
Alberobello has fuel, supermarkets and many restaurants, and in the evenings the old quarter fills with visitors. Eat orecchiette with turnip tops, burrata and the local primitivo wine, and visit a trullo cellar if one is open. Spring, when the fields are full of red poppies, and autumn are the best seasons, and in winter the town is almost empty.