Making memories

Tuesday 17/07/2018 (Day 32 SZ) Ceglie Messapica, Puglia 72013, Italy

Another day Dawns and today we are off to see the Trulli houses in Alberobello Puglia......but first Gianfranco offers to take us in a tour of the old villa... we start out down stairs then heading upstairs... to be honest it was much smaller from the inside to what it looks outside and he has a huge job ahead of him,as it has been left go a fair bit... he lives in what was the old sheds for the animals, turns out our room was for sheep and goats.... you wouldn’t know it now... part of his accommodation is where the horses used to live with their big drinking troughs...
His grandmother had tried to update parts of it but he prefers the original way it was... in the horse stables after his grandmother re did it, there was a huge oven and an area for cheese making... The old home had a massive hooded fireplace in the old kitchen... upstairs was a bathroom and a coupe of bedrooms, plus you climbed more stairs to the roof which had unreal views....... His aunt still,owns 1/4 of the house that sh refuses to sell to him and fellow who also owns another section of the old villa that has 2 Trulli roofs on it... I can see his passion for it, he has been at it fi 2 years Niemeyer living off his land and trying to restore it, he said he started with money 💴 he made in Holland and the USA, he thought would last 2 yrs but ran out after the first year it’s now the 2nd year... so he is of 2 minds how to sort out his plans to continue... he thinks he is old he is 40... and a builder by trade, so is hoping to do most by himself...

We realised time was moving in so we jumped into the car and headed off with a plan to see som sights on the way to and from seeing the Trulli’s....

Starting with Martina Franca, not getting out of the car here just a quick look....as we head close and close to Alberobello the Trullis get thicker and thicker....
So many different styles they look unreal... onto Locorotondo it was located on a hill a really quite tranquil little village with yes the obituary Cathedral in the middle...so pretty this village and relaxing... after a look around its alleys and the Cathedral, we had our morning tea break here in a very quite relaxed cafe on the edges of the village where you could see over the valley below...well worth our stop...

Then onto Alberobello, this made up for the quietness of our last stop people and traffic abounding..... we did manage to find a park not to long after our arrival, and off we set to find the tourist info centre on what to see and do here...at the end if the day,we aren’t really doing so much as seeing heaps by walking and taking in the sights....and this place is full of sights... the info centre is situated above the Trulli section below so as you come out of it you can see all the Trulli section of the village and yes it looks unreal. All the little coned houses Street after Street or should I say alley and alley....White washed with stone layered roofs it looks so intriguing..... people everywhere all clicking at once trying to get the best shot and no I wasn any different...many of the homes are now shops and restaurants... but many are still little homes... apparently they are very good to live in thermal and coolness wise due to their construction and their insulation qualities.... the area is UNESCO world Heritage site since 1996...

Fascinating how they came about info below from Wiki on their history only if your interested!

We spent a good couple of hours wandering around, I do love them and I was lucky to find an area where no one was so fit a few great shots without the hordes around...Also got to see a Trulli Cathedral, fascination really the dome roof.... then we wandered down had some lunch then onto our next port of call, shopping at Lidil in another good sized city with massive huge buildings as we find our way to the supermarket, again their supermarkets were away from the main areas... I still haven’t worked out how people without cars get there unless it’s public transport... then onto another town this one was a little port town...

Savelletri another quaint little fishing village with a marina and great little restaurants dotted around the harbour..... wonderful old fishing boats, a small cathedral with a great feel to the place..... only down side was the local boys playing in the bicycles which would have been fine except that one of them had a motorised bike and it sounded like a wounded flea..... if I could have squashed it I would have... he was racing back and forth in front of all the restaurants... little grub...

Last port of call was the town of Ostuni this is called the white city... because it sits in a Hill and you can see its white, white buildings from afar... this town also had a huge Castle and the old town Cittadella with the walls surrounding the whole old town... plus we discovered very touristy... mind you it was fascinating to see, yep the huge central Cathedral... apparently after reading about heaps of British have bought realestate here! None too happy are the locals about it! It has 32,000 residents and swells to 100,000 in summer, that’s unreal....

We wandered around for a fair bit of time had finally made it to a look out that gives views over the flat valley below, when a guy started to chat to a John as he was wearing his Australian Tshirt today... turns out Allan and Kay were travelling as well not as long as us but a fair amount of time... they were heading to Greece for Allan’s as they put it significant birthday... still trying to work out if 60 or 70... the were from Victoria Mornington Peninsula..... they have travelled Europe extensively over the years... they met back packing in the 70’s ... they took us into their amazing looking little apartment just next to the lookout as they were staying here in Ostuni..
But as the unit didn’t have aircon and it’s pretty hot... they decided to leave earlier than planned.... it was soooo great chatting to Aussies and again like minded people..That’s been a few times we have had that happen now and after not speaking or having a good conversation with others you do feel isolated...

We finished off looking around this amazing old town filled with alleys and arches everywhere.... we had parked in the lower part of the old city and for a while we wondered if we could make it back... after winding our way through a maze of alleys we did eventually make it out in one piece..... I just loved this city so interesting, but so man have been and we are really barely skimming the surface of each one... you could spend days wandering around them and still find another way home..

A long trip back the back way through many villages... around 9pm when we hit home, then I had to cook dinner.... ohh well trade off for a great day once again..



History on Alberobello!
A first anthropization of the area started only in the early sixteenth century on the impulse of the Count of Conversano Andrea Matteo III Acquaviva d'Aragona, son of the famous Count Giulio Antonio Acquaviva, who died in 1481 near Otranto, when 800 martyrs were killed in battle against the Ottomans . Count Andrea Matteo introduced from the fief of Noci about forty peasant families to reclaim and cultivate the land, with the obligation to give him the tenth of the crops.
His successor, the powerful Count Giangirolamo II, known as the Guercio delle Puglie because he had a blindfolded eye ( 1600 - 1665 ), in 1635 erected an inn with tavern and oratory, which started the urbanization of the forest with the construction of a conglomerate of small houses. The abundance of material, especially limestone and karst and calcareous sedimentary, and the permission of the count to build houses only with dry walls without the use of mortar, which became the characteristic trulli, contributed to the expansion of the urban agglomeration . This obligation to have houses built only with dry stones was an expedient of the count to avoid paying taxes to the Spanish viceroy of theKingdom of Naples according to the Pragmatica de Baronibus, law in force until 1700 according to which the construction of a new inhabited center involved first of all the royal assent and the consecutive payment of the tributes by the Baron to the Royal Court.
Alberobello was built on the streets of the ancient river Cana, where is now the largo Giuseppe Martelotta (also called largo delle fagade or largo della fiera).
Alberobello remained a fief of the Acquaviva of Aragon until May 27, 1797, when King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon, who was a guest in Taranto by the archbishop, welcomed the petition of a delegation consisting of three civilians and four priests from Alberobello (don Vito Onofrio Lippolis, Don Vito Nicola Tinelli and Don Francesco Sgobba) and issued a decree by which he elevated the small village to the royal city, freeing it from the feudal servitude of the counts. On 22 June 1797 the first mayor Francesco Giuseppe Lippolis was elected. In the same years the Casa D'Amore was also built by Francesco D'Amore, first cummersa with 2 floors. [ without source ] Alberobello is the only inhabited center in which there is an entire district of trulli. It is therefore considered cultural capital of the trulli of the Valle d'Itria.

The history of these very particular buildings is linked to the Prammatica De Baronibus, an edict of the 15th-century Kingdom of Naples that subjected every new urban settlement to a tribute. The Counts of Conversano D'Acquaviva D'Aragona from 1481, owners of the territory on which Alberobello stands today with the summer "domus" that was called Difesa De Le Noci on the border with the territory of the duchy of Martina Franca, then imposed on the peasants sent in these lands they built their dwellings dry, without using mortar, so that they could be configured as precarious buildings, easily demolished.
Therefore, having to use only stones, the peasants found in the round form with self-supporting domed roof, composed of overlapping stone circles, the simplest and most solid configuration. The domed roofs or half cone for straw called the false dome of the trulli are embellished with decorative pinnacles that represented as many say the pinnacle was the signature of the master trullaro who did it or that restored and represented the pose of the pinnacle an exciting moment, the whose form is inspired by profane symbolic, mystical and religious elements that appear above all in the Fascist period.

OSTUNI
The region around Ostuni has been inhabited since the Stone age. The town is reputed to have been originally established by the Messapii, a pre-classic tribe, and destroyed by Hannibal during the Punic Wars. It was then re-built by the Greeks, the name Ostuni deriving from the Greek Astu néon ("new town").
Sacked after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, in 996 AD the town became part of the Norman County of Lecce .The Normans built their medieval town around the summit of the hill (229 m), with a castle (only remains can be seen) and city walls with four gates. From 1300 to 1463 it was part of the Principality of Taranto and from 1507 (together with what is now the frazione of Villanova and Grottaglie) passed to Isabella, Duchess of Bari, wife of Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan. Under Isabella's rule, Ostuni thrived during the Italian Renaissance. Isabella protected humanists and people of art and letters, including bishop Giovanni Bovio. She died in 1524 and Ostuni passed as a dowry to her daughter Bona Sforza, wife-to-be of Sigismund I of Poland, King of Poland. During Bona Sforza's government, Ostuni continued to enjoy a stable rule. In 1539 she had towers built along all the shoreline as protection against anticipated attacks from Turks who controlled the Balkans. These towers (still extant, including Pozzella Tower, the Pylon, Villanova and others), were garrisoned and communicated using fiery beacons. The "Old Town" is Ostuni's citadel built on top of a hill and still fortified by the ancient walls. Ostuni is commonly referred to as "the White Town" (La Città Bianca in Italian) for its white walls and its typically white-painted architecture. Monuments in their own right, the town's largest buildings are the Ostuni Cathedral and the Bishop's Palace, together with a number of palazzi of local aristocratic families: Aurisicchio, Ayroldi, Bisantizzi, Falghieri, Ghionda, Giovine, Jurleo, Marseglia, Moro, Palmieri, Petrarolo, Siccoda, Urselli and Zaccaria.
In the surrounding countryside there are typical Pugliese "masserie", fortified large estate-farms, one of which, San Domenico, was once held by the Knights of Malta.Leia mais