A trulli wonderful time

This was a trip for trying out unusual accommodations.

We stayed in a guesthouse run by an order of Catholic priests in Venice and in an agriturismo in Molise. We spent two days on a working farm near Abruzzo and four nights in an apartment in Rome. Only once, in Naples, did we check into a regular hotel.

Now, as my husband and I said goodbye to our Ohio relatives and headed south again, this time to Matera and onto Apulia (Puglia in Italian), we were looking forward to our next overnight adventure, two nights in a 500-year-old, one-room stone house called a trullo.

Europeans love Apulia for its beaches and little seaside resort towns. Others know it as the jumping off point for ferries bound for Greece or Montenegro.

Neither intrigued us as much as spending the night somewhere in the Valle d'Itria. This is an inland area of white-washed hill towns and rolling farmland in the spur of the boot. It's main draw is its trulli: thousands of little beehive-shaped, mostly windowless limestone houses with domed roofs made of stacked stones. Stories vary as to how and why they came to be. Some mention a resemblance to the ancient round tombs found in the Roman countryside. Built without mortar, using prehistoric building techniques, they were easy to take apart by plucking out stones when the king's tax collectors showed up, according to one explanation, because as "unfinished structures," they couldn't be taxed.

Abandoned and forgotten for years, the trulli have become a major tourist draw. Property values have risen, and the owners have gone ... well, trulli crazy.

There are trulli barns and doctor's offices, homes, pizza parlors, gas stations, souvenir shops and B&Bs. Some are two or three centuries old or more; others are new. The largest concentration of original dwellings — more than 1,000 — are in the historic center of Alberobello, a UNESCO site.

A few years ago, a local company called Trullidea (www.trullidea.it) acquired 25 abandoned trulli, fixed them up and began renting them out. Each has a kitchen and bathroom, renting for about $110 a night for two.

Ours had a stone floor, cast-iron bed and antique furniture. Two small windows had been cut into the wall that faced the outside. A ceiling of wood planks blocked off the domed roof, but except for a chest of drawers where the fireplace used to be, and the added-on kitchenette and bathroom, the house didn't look much different than it did in a picture from the 1920s that we spotted hanging in the local museum.

Apulian Disneyland

What has changed is the neighborhood, in particular Via Monte Nero, a cobbled pedestrian passageway lined with some of the oldest trulli, including ours and others owned by Trullidea.

Many of the trulli have been turned into souvenir shops selling trulli-shaped bottles of limoncello and toy banks. By day, at least, Alberobello has become a tourist theme park, catering to busloads of foreign visitors. I almost regretted our decision to stay here, especially with so many trulli available for rent in the countryside.

It wasn't until early evening, when the shops closed and the tour buses left, that I realized we had lucked out. For the next 14 hours or so, we had Alberobello pretty much to ourselves.

Clogged with people earlier, Via Monte Nero was like a movie set. The white trulli on either side were awash in yellow light from the street lamps that went on just as the sun was setting.

We left the house and walked up the path for dinner, stopping to inspect the trulli more closely without the crowds. A few had religious or primitive good-luck symbols painted in white on the flat stone roofs. Most were topped by little hood ornaments, or pinnacles shaped like the tassels on stocking caps, said to be linked to the worship of the sun.

Meeting Giuseppe

Midway up the hill, where trulli are stacked up by the hundreds in a neighborhood called Rione Monti, we spotted a woman standing in the doorway of a restaurant. Many trulli are private homes, and locals are usually out strolling in the evening after the tour buses leave, but it was raining and we were the only customers. We ate pasta with pesto and a platter of roasted red peppers, and drank the local Salice Salentino wine, all for about $25 for two — not bad, we thought, for a tourist town.

Giuseppe Tedeschi also was without customers at his Delizie gelato shop, where we went for dessert. He's a candymaker who specializes in hand-made marzipan molded to look like salami or cheese. His shop is busy during the day, especially when students are in town for field trips, but at night he enjoys having the time to talk.

We sampled a few of his favorite chocolates and chatted about his cousins in New Jersey. By the next evening, we were regulars.

When I told him that this was our last night in Alberobello, he reached into his display case. "Per lei," he said. "For you." In his hand were two miniature chocolate beehive-shaped houses.

I was glad we hadn't stayed in the countryside. There was plenty there to see, of course. We found the best architecture a few miles away in the baroque town of Martina Franca, where Caffè Derna makes delicious little ricotta and chocolate-filled cakes called bocconotti. The best wine comes from Locorotondo, and you don't want to miss the views of the valley from its hilltop park shaded by olive and cork trees.

But, like Giuseppe's chocolates, spending the night in Alberobello was truly a treat.

Next: Life stops in Apulia, at least for a couple of hours each day