Didn’t get a chance to put these pics up before we left Italy.
Stayed in a small hillside town called Alborobello (on the ‘heel’ of Italy).
Cracking place. It’s got it’s modern urban sprawl but the centre of the town is 1500 ‘Trulli’ buildings which date back to around the 15th Century.

A number have been turned into tourist attractions, but most are still lived in.

I know I’m a big guy, but not that big that you can’t tell how small the buildings are. They were originally built by peasants and of dry-stone construction so that they could be dismantled very quickly – it was illegal for peasants to build houses, so they needed to be able to take them down whenever the village was going to be inspected by the authorities in Rome.

In around 1740 one of the village elders finally got an audience in Rome and managed to convince them to allow the peasants to build. From that point a number of them were rendered, but many remained dry-stone construction.

All the roofs are dry-stone, the only mortar is in the cone at the top (the different pinnacles denote a variety of religious meanings).

Most of the homes that are lived in are made up of between 2 and 6 of the individual buildings (depending on how much money you’ve got). Some are for sale in local Agencies and prices range from $130,00 for a small ruin, up to $500,000 for something pretty special in the countryside, with a bit of land.
Fascinating place.