Alberobello looks like a fairy tale for about the first thirty seconds, and then you start wondering how on earth the trulli stay up. These little round houses of limestone, with conical roofs built of flat stones stacked in rings and no mortar at all, are a building tradition unique to this corner of Puglia, and the Rione Monti quarter on the southern hill of town has the densest concentration of them anywhere, around a thousand packed along a few steep lanes.
The usual explanation for the dry-stone method is a tax story. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the local counts of Conversano are said to have encouraged peasants to build without mortar so the houses could be dismantled quickly if a royal inspector came to count dwellings and levy taxes. Whether every detail is true, it fits the place: the trulli feel like homes built by people who needed to be clever with what they had. Many roofs carry symbols painted in whitewash, crosses, hearts, planets and signs whose meaning is debated, and the pinnacles on top are a stonemason's signature.
Rione Monti is the busy side, lined with souvenir shops, small bars and rooms to rent inside trulli. Walk across the main road to the Aia Piccola district for a quieter version where people still simply live, and visit the Trullo Sovrano, the only two-storey trullo in town. Arrive early or stay into the evening, when the coach groups have gone and the stone glows in the low sun.
The real reason to come on a bike, though, is the Itria Valley that surrounds the town. It is not much of a valley, more a rolling plateau of red earth, olive trees, vineyards and dry-stone walls, but the small roads between Alberobello, Locorotondo, Cisternino and Martina Franca are a delight: narrow, gently curving, dotted with trulli in the fields, and almost empty in the middle of the week. Locorotondo, a white town built in a circle on its hill, makes a lovely coffee stop, and its crisp white wine is worth remembering for the evening.
Alberobello has around nine thousand residents, so fuel, cash machines and workshops are not a problem. Eat bombette, small rolls of pork stuffed with cheese and grilled over coals, a speciality of the Itria butchers, or orecchiette with turnip tops, the classic pasta of Puglia. Summer is hot and crowded; May, June and September are the months to choose for this ride.