Alberobello and Matera

A full day trip to these two sites. Alberobello is famous for trulli, these cute houses with conical roofs

The history is interesting. This was a way to avoid property taxes. The walls are dry stone masonry. A rider would come calling out the warning the tax collector was coming. Everyone leapt up and dismantled their homes.  By the time he arrived, nothing to tax. 

After a few more pix, 

I became more interested in the masonry, all over town. They are experts at it!

There are trulli out to 30 miles from town, on farms. And the most productive hay fields you ever saw. I guess in this warm Mediterranean climate, they get 3-4 cuttings per year.

Lunch at a lovely shaded park near a church, cheese and apple I brought along. Finding a shaded bench it Italy is nigh-on impossible. 

Then onto Matera. It's original claim to fame is its poverty, and how people lived in caves there (more boondocking than boondocking) until the 1960s. Its new claim to fame is it was used for a Daniel Craig Bond film. As a result of that tourism, it's not so poor now. 

not my shot. Wikimedia.

My favorite thing I found in Matera. Antonio Gramsci was a philospher and ground-breaking linguist, whom I read a lot of (in translation) in grad school. He wrote thousands of pages when imprisoned by the facists. Prison killed him, one of the finest Italian minds since Leonardo 

Castello Tramontano, 1500s. Never finished, as the despot building it was assassinated by the locals.