Alberobello and the symbols painted on the trulli

In the Itria Valley, in Apulia, Alberobello offers one of the most unusual townscapes in Europe. Hundreds of trulli, dry-stone limestone buildings with conical roofs, cluster in the Monti and Aia Piccola districts, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. On the grey roofs of many trulli stand out signs traced in white lime: crosses, hearts, circles, stars, abstract figures. These symbols, together with the pinnacles that crown the domes, have given rise to many interpretations, some well founded and others more fanciful.

Houses built without mortar

The trullo technique is very ancient and widespread throughout central Apulia, but Alberobello turned it into an urban system. Local tradition explains this concentration as a fiscal choice. In the seventeenth century the counts of Conversano, of the Acquaviva d'Aragona family, are said to have ordered the peasants to build their dwellings without mortar, so that they could be quickly dismantled in case of inspections. A decree of the Kingdom of Naples imposed taxes on new settlements, and dry-stone houses could be passed off as temporary shelters.

The count most closely tied to this story is Giangirolamo II Acquaviva, known as the Guercio di Puglia, the One-Eyed of Apulia, an energetic and unscrupulous lord. At the end of the eighteenth century the inhabitants asked to be freed from feudal rule, and on 27 May 1797 King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon granted Alberobello the status of royal town, ending its subjection to the counts. From then on people also began to build with mortar, but the trullo remained the typical form of dwelling.

The symbols on the roofs

The signs painted on the cones are among the most fascinating features of Alberobello. One can recognise Christian symbols, such as the plain cross, the cross above a globe, the pierced heart and the monstrance, alongside signs recalling the sun, the moon, the stars and the planets, and geometric figures that are hard to read. Some scholars see in them the survival of ancient magical and propitiatory signs, others the popular adaptation of devotional symbols common in the peasant world.

Their dating is uncertain. Many of the symbols visible today were retouched or repainted in the twentieth century, partly for the sake of tourism, and it is not always possible to tell the old ones from the recent ones. Tradition attributed to them a protective function for the house and the family, but written sources on this point are scarce, and the more elaborate explanations should be treated with caution.

The pinnacles and the Trullo Sovrano

The pinnacles too, the decorative elements set on top of the cones, take various forms: spheres, discs, cones, stars. According to one tradition they indicated the skill of the master trullo builder or the family living in the house. The largest and most famous trullo is the Trullo Sovrano, the only one with two floors, built in the eighteenth century at the wish of a priest of the Perta family. In the Monti district stands the church of Sant'Antonio, built in the shape of a trullo in the 1920s.

Alberobello shows how an architecture born of economic necessity took on strong symbolic meaning over time. The stone houses, with their white signs turned towards the sky, have become a visual language that unites faith, popular beliefs and community identity. Walking through the lanes of the Monti, looking up at the roofs, means reading a simple and mysterious alphabet written in lime on stone.