Alberobello is unlike any other town in Italy. On two facing slopes, more than a thousand trulli form a landscape of white walls and grey conical roofs, each cone built by corbelling flat limestone slabs one over another, without mortar. The technique belongs to the wider Itria Valley, where trulli stand scattered among olive groves and dry-stone walls, but nowhere else has it produced a complete urban fabric: streets, staircases, chapels, even a two-storey trullo. Pinnacles crown the roofs in an unexplained variety of forms, and painted symbols mark some of the cones. Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, the districts of Rione Monti and Aia Piccola remain inhabited, and the interiors, with their thick walls and cool alcoves, reveal a domestic logic shaped by the climate. Filmed in 4K, with aerial views that make the geometry of the roofs legible, the programme documents both the technique and the town that grew from it.
