Alberobello: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
A trullo is a round house of stacked limestone with a cone for a roof, and it is built without mortar. The story the town tells is that this was deliberate: the counts who owned the land had settled peasants here without the king’s permission, and a house with no mortar could be taken apart in a day when the royal inspectors came. Whether or not it is true, the town was freed in 1797 and the cones stayed. Two hours on foot, uphill in Rione Monti, and before ten or after six the lanes are your own.
A short history of Alberobello
Alberobello is known for its trulli, round houses of white stone with conical roofs, built without mortar. According to the usual explanation, the counts of Conversano required the peasants to build this way so that the houses could be taken apart quickly to avoid taxes. In 1797 King Ferdinand IV declared Alberobello a free town. In 1996 the trulli were declared a World Heritage Site, and the town has more than 1,500 of them.
The ten best sights in Alberobello
1Rione MontiAbout a thousand trulli on one hillside; go before ten or after six
2Aia PiccolaThe quieter trulli quarter where people still live
3Belvedere Santa LuciaThe terrace with the view over all the cones of Rione Monti
-
4Trullo Sovrano
The only trullo with an upper floor, furnished as it was lived in
-
5Sant’Antonio
A church built in the shape of a trullo, at the top of the quarter
6Basilica of Saints Cosmas and DamianThe town’s church of the doctor saints, at the end of the main street
7Casa d’AmoreThe first house in town built with mortar — the year the town was freed
8Trullo SiameseA double trullo with a story about two brothers and one bride
9Casa PezzollaFifteen joined trulli made into the town museum
10Piazza del PopoloThe square between the two quarters, and the evening is here
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Alberobello →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Alberobello:
Free walking tours in Alberobello
Houses built to be pulled down
A trullo is a round house of stacked limestone with a cone for a roof, and it is built without mortar. The story the town tells is that this was deliberate: the counts who owned the land had settled peasants here without the king’s permission, and a house with no mortar could be taken apart in a day when the royal inspectors came. Whether or not it is true, the town was freed in 1797 and the cones stayed. Two hours on foot, uphill in Rione Monti, and before ten or after six the lanes are your own.
- Belvedere Santa Lucia · Start with the whole picture: from this terrace the hillside opposite is about a thousand grey cones, some with white symbols painted on them in lime — crosses, hearts, signs of the planets. Nobody agrees what all of them meant, and the town has never fully decided whether they are Christian, older, or simply decoration.
- Rione Monti · Walk up any lane and look at how the roofs are made: rings of flat stones, each a little smaller than the last, closing to a point with no beam inside. The weight holds it together, and the thick walls keep it cool in an August that reaches forty degrees. Nearly every trullo in this quarter is now a shop, which is why the morning is the time to see it.
- Sant’Antonio · At the top of the hill, a church built in 1927 in the form of a trullo — a cone over the nave and another over the bell tower. It is modern, made with mortar, and it is the town deciding that its poor peasant houses were now the thing it was proud of.
- Trullo Siamese · Two cones joined into one building, with two doors on opposite streets. The story is that two brothers lived here and both loved the same woman; when she chose one, the house was divided down the middle so they would never have to meet. It is one of the oldest trulli in town.
- Casa d’Amore · On the twenty-seventh of May 1797 King Ferdinand IV of Naples freed Alberobello from its feudal lords and made it a royal town. The first thing a man named Francesco d’Amore did was build a house with mortar, which had been forbidden. It is this one, and the inscription over the door records it.
- Trullo Sovrano · The only trullo in town with a real upper floor, built in the eighteenth century by a wealthy family and later used as a chapel and a seat for a religious brotherhood. Inside it is furnished as a home, and climbing the stair inside a cone shows you how the roof works from underneath.
The white towns of the valley
The Valle d’Itria is a plateau of olive and almond groves dotted with trulli, and on the hills around it are white towns, each a few kilometres from the next — round Locorotondo, baroque Martina Franca, Cisternino with its grilling butchers, and Ostuni, the whitest of all. A full day and a car, or the old aqueduct path by bicycle; the towns are best in the evening.
- Locorotondo · The name means round place, and the old town is laid out in concentric rings on its hilltop, the houses whitewashed and roofed with steep pitched stone called cummerse. The vineyards below make a white wine that was one of the first in Italy to receive a protected name.
- Martina Franca · The richest of the valley towns, rebuilt in the eighteenth century in a baroque so curly it reads as rococo. Every July it hosts the Festival della Valle d’Itria, which specialises in reviving forgotten operas in the courtyard of the ducal palace.
- Palazzo Ducale, Martina Franca · Built for the Caracciolo dukes from 1668, with a design once credited to Bernini. Upstairs, rooms were painted in the eighteenth century with scenes of country life and myth, and the building is still the town hall.
- Cisternino · The town of the fornello pronto, the ready oven: you walk into a butcher’s shop, choose the meat from the counter, and they grill it for you in the stone oven at the back while you wait at a table in the street. The thing to order is bombette — small rolls of pork wrapped round cheese.
- Ostuni · The old town is limewashed white from top to bottom, and the custom is old — lime was cheap, it reflected the heat, and it was believed to disinfect. In a cave near the town archaeologists found the skeleton of a young woman who died pregnant about twenty-eight thousand years ago, with the bones of the baby still inside her.
- Ostuni Cathedral · At the very top of the white town, a cathedral finished at the end of the fifteenth century with a late-Gothic front and a great rose window. The lanes that climb to it are the reason to come; take any of them and keep going up.
Down to the sea
From the plateau the land drops through a ridge of woods to the Adriatic, half an hour away. On the way down are caves found only in 1938, and on the coast a Roman town where Horace once laughed at a miracle, a town built on a cliff over the sea, and a harbour of blue fishing boats. A full day and a car; bring a swimsuit for the cove.
- Grotte di Castellana · For centuries the locals threw rubbish into a deep hole in the ground here and called it the Grave. In January 1938 a speleologist named Franco Anelli had himself lowered into it and found three kilometres of caves behind it. The long tour ends in the Grotta Bianca, a chamber of white alabaster crystal.
- Polignano a Mare · The town stands on the edge of a limestone cliff that the sea has hollowed out underneath, so some houses sit over sea caves. Domenico Modugno, who sang Volare, was born here in 1928, and his statue on the front stands with its arms spread wide.
- Lama Monachile · A gorge cuts through the town to a small pebble cove, and over its mouth runs a bridge on the line of the Via Traiana, the Roman road to Brindisi. The cove is the town beach, wedged between two cliffs of houses.
- Monopoli Old Port · A working harbour of small wooden boats painted blue, and in the morning the fishermen sit on the quay mending nets. The walk along the sea wall goes past a castle of Charles V to the cathedral, and the town is still more fishing port than resort.
- Egnazia · A Messapian and then Roman town on the Via Traiana. In 37 BC the poet Horace passed through on a journey to Brindisi and wrote that the townspeople showed him incense that melted on the temple threshold without fire — and that he would believe it when pigs flew, or in his words, let the Jew Apella believe it.
- Lama d’Antico · A small ravine where monks and farmers cut churches into the soft rock around the tenth and eleventh centuries, and painted them. The ravines of Puglia were lived in for a thousand years, and this one shows how — chapels, houses and storerooms in one cut through the stone.
Getting to Alberobello and getting around
- Bari Airport · About an hour by car; by train, change in Bari to the local line
- Alberobello Station · The little Sud-Est railway from Bari; slow, and through the olive groves
Cheap eats in Alberobello
The Valle d’Itria eats meat, and the custom is to eat it at the butcher’s. In Cisternino, Martina Franca and Locorotondo the butchers run a fornello pronto — you choose from the counter and they grill it in a stone oven at the back. The thing to try is bombette, small pork rolls wrapped round cheese, sold by the piece. In the morning it is focaccia barese with tomatoes and olives from any bakery, a couple of euro a slice.
- Cisternino · Pay by the weight of raw meat; the grilling is free
- Martina Franca · Capocollo, the cured pork neck of the town, sliced by weight
- Locorotondo · The local white wine by the glass, a few euro
- Piazza del Popolo · Focaccia barese from the bakeries off the square
- Monopoli Old Port · Raw sea urchins and mussels at the harbour stalls
- Masseria Il Frantoio · A long farm lunch and its own olive oil; book ahead
Museums in Alberobello
The museums of the valley are the houses themselves: a trullo with an upper floor, fifteen trulli joined into one museum, a town where the first mortar house is still marked. Beyond them are a Roman town on the sea, cave churches, and a woman twenty-eight thousand years old.
- Trullo Sovrano · The only trullo with an upper floor; furnished
- Casa Pezzolla · How a trullo is built, inside fifteen of them
- Egnazia · The Roman town and its museum, on the sea
- Lama d’Antico · Painted cave churches in a ravine
- Palazzo Ducale, Martina Franca · Painted rooms upstairs in the town hall
- Ostuni · Delia, twenty-eight thousand years old, in the town museum
Nature and day trips near Alberobello
The valley is red earth, olive trees hundreds of years old, dry-stone walls and almond groves, crossed by the old aqueduct that brought water to Puglia — its service path is now a cycle route. Under it are caves, and below the ridge the sea.
- Grotte di Castellana · The long tour is three kilometres; it is cool inside all year
- Selva di Fasano · Woods on the ridge and the view to the sea
- Lama Monachile · A pebble cove between cliffs; go early
- Torre Canne · Sandy beach under a lighthouse
- Locorotondo · The aqueduct cycle path passes below the town
- Lama d’Antico · A ravine walk among ancient olive trees
Things to do in Alberobello with kids
Houses that look like gnome huts, a cave with a hole you are lowered into in the story, and a safari park you drive through: the area is easy with children. The coast near here is rock, so for sand go to Torre Canne.
- Zoosafari Fasano · Drive through with the animals around the car
- Trullo Sovrano · Climb inside a cone house
- Grotte di Castellana · The short tour suits younger children
- Torre Canne · The nearest sand
- Il Minareto · A villa that looks like a palace from a story
- Rione Monti · Find the symbols painted on the roofs
Holy places in Alberobello
The religion of the valley is in its symbols — crosses and stranger signs painted in lime on the trullo roofs — and in a church shaped like a trullo. The towns around add baroque cathedrals and churches cut into rock a thousand years ago.
- Sant’Antonio · A church in the form of a trullo, 1927
- Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian · The doctor saints; their feast fills the town in September
- Ostuni Cathedral · A rose window at the top of the white town
- San Martino, Martina Franca · The saint sharing his cloak, carved over the door
- Lama d’Antico · Cave churches with Byzantine paintings
- Belvedere Santa Lucia · The roof symbols, seen all together from above
Nightlife in Alberobello
The valley is not a nightlife place; the evening is a long dinner and a walk in a lit white town. For music and late bars, the coast at Polignano and Monopoli is half an hour away, and in July Martina Franca has opera under the stars.
- Cisternino · The grill-butchers’ lanes, full until late
- Ostuni · Bars on the steps of the white town
- Polignano a Mare · Drinks on the cliff over the sea
- Monopoli · The harbour bars, and the young crowd of the coast
- Palazzo Ducale, Martina Franca · The opera festival in the courtyard, July
- Piazza del Popolo · The trulli lit at night, and the square quiet by eleven
Frequently asked questions about Alberobello
What is there to see in Alberobello?
The top sights in Alberobello are Rione Monti, Aia Piccola and Belvedere Santa Lucia. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Alberobello?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Alberobello without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Alberobello?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Alberobello, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Houses built to be pulled down.
How do you get to Alberobello and get around?
The main ways are Bari Airport and Alberobello Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Alberobello, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Alberobello that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Alberobello for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.