THE TOWN OF ALBERO BELLO

 

Albero Bello is a town of 11,000 people in the province of Bari in the region of Puglia, Italy. Interestingly, the words, albero and bello, mean pretty tree or pretty poplar tree. The town is famous for its unique style of buildings called trulli, singular trullo. These are dry-stone buildings with cone-shaped stone roofs. The history of building these structures dates back to 1200 BC, when the first wave of Indo-Europeans from the East settled there, developing into the following ancient Italic tribes; Veneti, Picinum, Umbrians,  Latins, Osci, Messapi, and Greeks. The Messapi settled in the area of Puglia. Linguistics conjecture that the word trullo derived from the Greek word tholos, because in Mycenea there are conical tombs called tholos. Mycenea is located across the Adriatic Sea from Italy and at the end of the Balkans where its shores are on the Ionian Sea. The civilization was of Greek origin.

The buildings are round and because of this either a very large one needs to be built to have various rooms in the interior. But, instead of doing that for each additional room they build a separate attached trullo. During the summer they are comfortable given that hot air rises; however, in the winter they are difficult to heat for the same reason. The trulli exist throughout the region in a number of different towns and are very popular tourist attractions to Italians. They tend to be the most frequent visitors to the area. Another main attraction is the making of pilgrimages to the Basilica dedicated to Sts. Cosmas and Damiano in Albero Bello, twin brothers who were physicians and Christian martyrs of the 2nd century. (www.cahtolic.org)