Trulli and cheese in Puglia

Looking over Alberobello's 1500 trulli

Across the Puglian landscape near Bari, you’ll find the unusual round houses with domed and pointed roofs called trulli.  They’re built of limestone bricks and topped with limestone “shingles”, really just large, thin chips of stone.  Greeks built a version of trullo 2000 years ago and Turks built something similar in Cappadocia.  Mostly, in Puglia, the trullis were used for animal shelters, taking advantage of the building material prevalent in the area, limestone. 

In the 1600’s, in an effort to avoid paying taxes to the Spanish Viceroy in Naples, the local Count ordered that all new houses be built of stone without mortar.  Apparently that meant they weren’t really houses so couldn’t be taxed.  Local people in Alberobello subsequently built trullis as their homes during the 17^th century.  There are 1500 trullis in Alberobello, creating a major, and charming, tourist attraction, and crowding the stone streets with tour groups during the high season.  So now, the trullis are mostly shops, cafes and B and B’s.  But, on our visit, it was February and chilly and quite empty. 

Alberobello street

May of the trulli have symbols painted on their roofs.  These are to bring good luck and keep away the demons. 

symbols to bring good luck

Some of the trullis form cul de sacs.  These developed when sons married and started their own families, building their trullis next to those of their parents and siblings.  

family cluster of trullis

One trulli is a “twin”, supposedly because two brothers fell in love with the same woman.  One married her and, since they both lived in the same house, the successful brother built a wall in the middle of the trullo to keep his brother away from his new wife. 

twin-roofed trullo

We left Alberobello to visit a cheese farm, which was such a fun visit.  The owner showed us his dairy cows and the piglets and their moms who live amongst them.  Everybody looks quite happy, which makes our huge pig farms, where animals are squashed together and never leave their tiny pens, seem especially terrible.

Giorgio, the farmer, showed us his milking barn, with milking stations for 8 cows at a time, and his large vats where he heats the milk to make cheese.  He makes several kinds of cheese, including mozzarella, which apparently takes a great deal of slapping and stretching to get to the best quality.  We didn’t make cheese, but will do so if we bring a group to Puglia.  Even though we didn’t do any work, he served us a delicious lunch of fresh, homemade bread, his sausages, several kinds of his cheese and tomato bruschetta.  We tasted his own olive oil and wine, all of which made a perfect lunch.

 

contented cows

Over lunch, our guide told us about her family.  It’s quite an extraordinary story.  She lived in Los Angeles for 10 years, attending UCLA and working as a translator, but returned home when she realized the tug of family and Italy. 

and happy pigs

She has two sons, the oldest her biological son who is a doctor.  Her younger son she adopted about a year ago at the age of 21.  He was in a Belorussian orphanage, not because he was an orphan, but because his parents abandoned him when he was a toddler.  An Italian organization matches Belorussian orphans with Italian families so the children can spend 4 months a year, December and the summer months, with an Italian family.  This relieves the orphanage of the need to feed the children for those 4 months and also lets them close during that time and cut costs.  For the children, the advantages are obvious.  

mozzarella

Don and sausage

Our guide said her son was malnourished when he arrived for his first Christmas at the age of 6 and looked much better by the time he returned to Belarus.  Every year thereafter, he arrived for Christmas and the 3 months of summer to stay with them.  They became a family of four instead of three.  After her Belarussian son graduated from high school, she started trying to get him legal residency in Italy so he could leave Belarus.  

lunch at the cheese farm

Ultimately, she and her husband were able to legally adopt him, at considerable cost and effort, but, even then, he barely made it out of the country because Belarus now needs young men, presumably for the military.  He was actually at the airport waiting to board his flight to Italy when the Belarussian agents stopped him, demanding more paperwork.  Our guide said she was able to get the paperwork, fax it to her lawyer in Belarus, and get her son on the plane.  He now lives with her and her husband and is studying to get into the university here.

 

Driving to the tip of Italy

 

Italy's rocky Adriatic Coast along the "heel"

Yesterday, we drove from our farm hotel, Masseria Montenapoleone, to Otranto, far south on Italy’s Adriatic Coast, then on around the heel of the boot of Italy to Gallipoli.  We disobeyed Google Maps and its insistence on sending us on the “better” roads, and found a beautiful back road that hugged the coastline.  This took us high on clifftops overlooking the Adriatic, through summer towns completely closed for the winter, with second-home villas dug into the limestone mountainsides, and to Santa Maria di Leuca at the far tip of the heel where the Adriatic and Ionian Seas come together.

 

beach at Santa Maria di Leuca

Masseria Napoleone, our farm hotel in Puglia

 

 We tried to stay along the coast road up the west side   of the heel, but the road became increasingly   impassable and finally collapsed in front of a barrier   barring further travel.  Surprisingly, the streets in the   little coastal villages west of Santa Maria di Leuca   were in terrible shape, barely drivable because of   their huge potholes and loose gravel.  This, despite                                                                                     the elegant villas that filled the towns and lined the                                                                                     water.

A powerful thunderstorm doused us with rain and filled the sky with intense lightning.  The rain was so heavy, we couldn’t hear the thunder.  I kept looking out at the dark, churning Mediterranean Sea, thinking how terrifying it must seem to African immigrants fleeing poverty and violence only to be loaded onto tiny boats presumably taking them to Italy, but often left adrift as the people clinging to them hope for rescue. 

rocky cove along the Adriatic

Though we investigated several restaurants that said they were open, everything was closed except for a fish market at one locked up café and Mama Mia, a blue and white restaurant above a tiny marina in one small village.  There we had excellent seafood salads and fresh bread, helped out in our menu choice by a couple and their baby, the only other patrons.

Our first stop was in Otranto, now a seaside town and port, with a gruesome history.  Otranto was the site of the Greek city of Hydrus, then became a Roman city, a Norman port and, in 1480, the unfortunate victim of an Ottoman invasion.  The Ottomans slaughtered all the men, leaving only 10,000 of the 22,000 inhabitants alive, enslaving 5000 of those who survived.  They left a year later, driven off by the King of Naples.  The current fortress was built after the Ottomans left.

 

Otranto fortress

 South and west of Otranto, the Sea is a gorgeous   turquoise, shading, on this stormy day, to a dark   gray- blue.  The strong wind sent turquoise and   white waves frothing into the cliffs and coves.  On   the west side of the heel, the land slopes more gently   to the Sea, but is still all limestone and cactus.  The   beaches are stones, not sand, and don’t look like a   comfortable place to spread your beach towel.

2000 year old olive tree

In this part of Italy, an economic and ecological catastrophe is underway.  Large olive orchards cover the hills and plains of the region.  But as we drove along the back roads, we could see that thousands of acres of olive trees were dead.  A bacteria is killing the trees, some of which are several thousand years old, huge, gnarly and very productive.  Some farmers are cutting off the enormous dead trunks and letting stems grow from the roots, hoping to keep the characteristics of their olive oil through growing new trees from the old roots.  But, these will take a decade before they produce the volume and quality of olives that the ancient giants produced. 

 

A meandering drive through Basilicata and Puglia, southern Italy

 

mountains of Basilicata

Rugged mountains did not stop Greeks, Romans or Normans from building and fortifying towns in seemingly inaccessible places.  We drove to two of these towns, southeast of Naples in the Basilicata region, up incredibly steep and narrow roads, some only 1 car wide with no shoulders (and, right now, with snow piled on the sides of the roads).  I was happy this is not tourist season so I didn’t have to face off against the nose of a large bus or even another car. 

Pietrapertosa

Jagged slabs of rock rise above the roads and shelter the towns nestled against them.  We wandered around both Pietrapertosa and Castelmezzano, closed down right now, but busier during the tourist season with a few shops and restaurants that cater to the visitors.  It took us 25 minutes to wind our way from Pietrapertosa down into a steep valley and up the opposite mountainside to Castelmezzano, but there is the (reportedly) longest zip line in the world between the two towns that would probably get you there faster, if not as comfortably.

Castelmezzano

 Only a few older locals were sitting in the sun in   Pietrapertosa and Castelmezzano, but still a couple   of carabinieri stopped us on our way out of   Pietrapertosa on the skinny, windy road with no one   traveling on it to make sure I had a driver’s license   and the car had a registration.  An excellent use of   resources.  A small hotel in Castelmezzano opened   in time for us to get some lunch before moving on to   the striking 13th century Castel del Monte, built by   the Swabian king, Frederick II, who prized the area   for its excellent hunting.  The castle has been   stripped of its treasures, but is worth a visit to see its                                                                                  unusual octagonal shape formed by large towers, and                                                                                  beautiful limestone walls.

Castel del Monte

We drove through the hills of Puglia, visiting 3 of the hill towns known for their historic centers.  Locorotondo, founded as a town in about 1000 AD, has been called the prettiest town in Italy, a title it deserves along with many other charming ancient towns in Italy.   We wandered around the tiny streets of several towns, enjoying the beauty of their limestone buildings and pleasant piazzas.  Since this is not tourist season, nothing was open, but people told us the crowds are thick during high season. 

Locorotondo

We are staying at an old farm, Masseria Montenapoleone, in the midst of Puglia’s ancient olive orchards (which I’ll write about in my next blog), close to both the hill towns and the lovely cities along the Adriatic Coast.  The most popular of these is Polignano a Mare, with its beautiful historic center and clear turquoise water washing up against the cliffs below the town and creating dark blue grottoes in   those cliffs. 

Polignano 

 Once a Greek trading center, Polignano was later   dominated by the Romans, Byzantine Turks,   Normans and Spanish.  Most of these towns had   walls and towers, including tower homes built by   families who hoped to spot foreign invaders coming   from the sea before they arrived in order to mount a   defense.  But, history was not kind to the   townspeople in any age and none of the protections   they devised ultimately kept them safe from the next                                                                                   wave of conquerors.

 

church in Polignano's main piazza

Polignano’s “centro storico” did have some tourists, mostly vacationing Italians, despite the off-season, so restaurants and shops were open.  But, the pretty streets were not crowded.  Many lead down to the edge of the cliffs, providing a beautiful view of the gorges dividing the sections of the town and the white buildings lining the sea.

Polignano's tiny beach

Matera, Italy, one of the oldest cities in the world

view of Matera's Sassi district

Italian lore says Matera is the third oldest city in the world, though a google search doesn’t list it in the top 10 oldest cities, so it probably depends on how you decide what constituted the “first inhabited” city.  Nevertheless, Matera is probably the oldest city in Europe (though residents of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, lay claim to that honor also), a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a spectacular place to visit.

photo of donkey next to bed in cave

Early inhabitants carved cave homes out of the soft limestone rock along the upper edges of the gorge that marks the first settling of Matera.  People lived in those caves until the 1950’s, with no electricity, running water or sanitation.  Their animals lived inside the small, dank homes with them.  The stable and “manure room” (just what it says it is) were part of the bedroom/living area/kitchen.  I took a photo of a human/donkey photo in the cave home we visited.

Residents of Matera were poor farmers who used animals for work and transport, but rarely for food.  An animal was so valuable that, upon its death, every part of it was used, including its bones as supports for roof tiles in this house. 

animal bones supporting roof tiles

Residents used chamber pots for toilets, pouring the contents into open channels running alongside the cobbled streets, which, along with the intimate presence of animals and animal waste in the caves, made the entire area extremely unhealthy, especially for children.  Child mortality was very high, even into the 1950’s. 

The Sassi, as this part of Matera is known, became the “shame of Italy” in the 1950’s, so the government built housing for the 18,000 residents and moved them, willingly and unwillingly, to the new apartments with power, water and toilets in exchange for their cave dwellings.  Now, the caves are owned by the government and mostly uninhabited. 

You can get a 99 year lease on a cave and restore it at great cost, so most of the restoration, which is strictly controlled to preserve the structures and history, has gone into hotels, restaurants, and B and B’s.  You have to use natural materials in restoring buildings, so, for example, you’ll see clay pipes outside homes rather than plastic or metal pipes. 

clay drains in restored house

Matera from the gorge

We stayed in a lovely cave hotel overlooking the gorge where the city started, but you do have to navigate lots of steps to get to your cave room or to the breakfast room located in the ancient cave church.

Our guide described the architecture as “negative/positive”.  The negative space is the cave, with the rock carved out to make or enlarge the cave.  The positive space is the blocks of rock carved from the cave debris that formed inside and outside walls in many of the caves, or the rock left standing inside the cave as in the pillars of the cave churches.

13th century church door

Like most Italian cities, Matera is full of churches, at least half of them unused or reused for some other purpose.  Some have beautiful frescoes; several have multiple layers of frescoes.  As the paintings became dark or damaged, artisans put on a new layer of plaster over them and painted images on the new layer.  Several churches had 3 layers of frescoes.  In one church, you can see a saint’s head high up on the wall, with 2 more layers of frescoes below the head.  You’re not supposed to hide or damage a saint’s head, if possible, so artists tried to find ways to preserve them.

frieze of purgatory on Purgatory Church

Medieval Catholicism made a point of terrifying people into good behavior.  This frieze of Purgatory is on the front of a church named “Purgatory”.  It features suffering skeletons and some poor soul burning in Hell.  We visited the painted churches of Romania last year to see their exterior walls covered with magnificently colorful paintings of all the horrible things that happen to miscreants.  The paintings are on the outside so that the scores of peasants who couldn’t get inside the church during a service would still be able to see the terrors that awaited them if they misbehaved.

icon in building wall

 

The Amalfi Coast--stunning and impassable

 

the Amalfi Coast and the town of Amalfi

The Amalfi Coast is known for its magnificent scenery, so we decided to drive from Naples to Amalfi, following the Sorrento Peninsula west from Naples and back east along the Amalfi Coast.  The drive was supposed to take about an hour and a half.  But, after spending 2 hours in gridlocked traffic and being nowhere near the west end of the Peninsula, we decided to skip Sorrento and drive over the rugged and precipitous mountains to Amalfi instead.  The back road we took is one hairpin turn after another--not switchbacks, but real hairpin turns, as this photo of the map shows.  The road is narrow, in bad condition, and absolutely beautiful, with incredible views back to the Bay of Naples and, once over the crest, down to the Amalfi Coast and the sea beyond.  The mountains themselves are high and steep, with deep gorges and cliffs plummeting to the Mediterranean.  

map of the back road to Amalfi over the mountains

This is winter.  There is almost nothing open in Amalfi--not a hotel, boat service or restaurant, except one restaurant (which turned out to be excellent) in the port.  But, the traffic was intense and the limited parking, packed.  We were able to find a parking place for 6 euros so we could walk along the boardwalk through the town.  

some of the hotels in Amalfi

There are countless hotels filling the steep mountainside above Amalfi and the other towns along the coast.  Though they were all closed, there were still many tourists, tourist buses and cars flowing in and out of the center of town.  I cannot imagine how anyone can move during the high season when the hotels are packed with thousands of tourists.  The roads must be impassable, even for buses.  You could come in by boat, but the port is small, so I don't know how practical that would be.

I would not come to the Amalfi Coast during tourist season.  And, if we bring a group to Southern Italy, we will bypass that area, despite its fame and beauty.  There are lots of gorgeous coastlines in the world to visit without spending your time stuck in traffic.

The charms of Naples, Italy

 

Majolica bench, Santa Chiara cloister

Naples is a wonderful Baroque surprise.  Before starting our drive around southern Italy, we flew into Naples to spend a couple of days.  We're so glad we did.  This is a city with layers of history, Greek, Roman, Norman, Spanish Empire, French, and now its own creation.

Medieval arch and graffiti

Once the capital of a kingdom that encompassed southern Italy and Sicily, Naples went into decline after the unification of Italy in 1861 as industry and jobs moved north and the entire southern part of Italy became the poor half of the new nation.  The Mafia took advantage of the ensuing despair to build its large criminal empire.

outdoor market

Tourism is beginning to revive Naples, with many B & B’s, restaurants and merchants now filling the historic center of the city.  It is a popular stop for cruise ships, particularly since it is near the island of Capri and the ancient Roman ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum.  Mt. Vesuvius, whose huge eruption buried Pompeii under a thick layer of ash in 79 AD looms in the distance.  

royal palace

The historic center of Naples is packed with tourists, university students and locals.  There is music in every piazza, graffiti on every wall and lots of trash in the streets, but the liveliness and the history block out the cigarette butts and confetti (left over from Carnival), while the graffiti becomes street art as it blends with the Renaissance arched doorways leading into the innumerable palaces.

Graffiti on palace wall

Many of the beautiful Baroque buildings are crumbling, but others have been restored fully or in part into homes, B and B’s and museums.  There are hundreds of churches in the small historic center of Naples, many now empty because church attendance is low, some now home to small shops and cafes.  The entire area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The very narrow streets of the historic center open onto numerous piazzas, all with at least one church.  Because most of the alleyways don’t have sidewalks, pedestrians and motor scooters share the cobbled streets.  Drivers in tiny cars and trucks try to negotiate the crowds, hoping to avoid getting stuck as a street becomes nearly impassably narrow.  Any extra space is quickly filled with a café’s small tables and chairs, which, in turn, fill up with people.

Santa Chiara cloister arcade

A highlight is the Santa Chiara cloister, built in the 18^th century as a peaceful place for the nuns to walk outside, secluded from the busy life of the surrounding city.  Pillars, walls and benches are covered with colorful Majolica tiles depicting scenes of ordinary activities. 

Cloister nativity scene

Inside the cloister is a large Nativity scene, filled not with Mary, Joseph and Jesus, who have only a small presence in it, but with figures and scenes of daily life.  Our guide told us that Nativity scenes are very important to families at Christmas and are filled with their favorite daily activities.  She took us to a street that sells figurines and dioramas for Nativity scenes, ranging from political and sports figures to butcher shops and farms.  Before Christmas, families go together to select which items they want to adorn their holiday Nativity scene in their homes.

Fish market diorama for home nativity scene

Girls sometimes entered convents in order to receive an education which was difficult for most of them to get outside.  Others were sent to convents because that was a cheaper alternative to providing a marriage dowry for them.  

The Spanish Quarter is slowly responding to the opportunities tourism brings.  In the lower streets of the Quarter, restaurants, tourist shops, and bars abound.  There are 2 people adored by Neapolitans, whose images are all over walls and signs, the soccer star, Maradona, and the movie star, Sophia Loren.

the last supper with Sophia Loren

The Piazza Plebiscito is the main piazza of Naples and is home to the Royal Palace.  Along with the neighboring port, the Spanish Quarter and the Centro Historico, this is the heart of Naples, a great place to stay and to wander.   

Piazza Plebiscito