Susan Main wins £200 for her tale of the trulli houses of southern Italy and families at loggerheads over the centuries.
The train seemed as relieved as we were to escape Bari’s dingy suburbs, picking up speed and plunging into a landscape both agricultural and archaeological. Graffitied stations gave way to grazing cattle and grimy apartment blocks to slumbering farmland.
Soon, I started to turn my attention to three passengers arguing (eventually I was called on to mediate and forced to judge the true colour of the daughter-in-law’s freshly painted kitchen wall). After scrutinising the proffered photo, and realising my Italian vocabulary did not extend to “peachy-beige”, I gave my vote to the mother-in-law and auntie, and victory was declared for “orange”. As the older women chuckled, the huffy daughter-in-law looked torn between firing her decorator and doing me physical injury.
Fortunately, we were soon distracted by a more prehistoric paint job whizzing past the windows. Troops of vines gave crooked salutes to curious whitewashed stone tepees, the circular limestone trulli houses unique to this part of Italy.
Arriving in the town of Alberobello (just saying the name has the sensation of rolling marbles around your mouth), we spilt across the tracks and scrambled up the hill towards the town centre.
The trulli treasure hunt began almost immediately, as these almost extra-terrestrial dwellings (many occupied, judging by some fancy delicates on washing lines) peeked out warily from behind the bustling businesses that framed the main square.
As we ventured deeper into the town, these 14th-century survivors (whose drystone construction, it is believed, enabled the inhabitants to dismantle them sharpish in order to avoid paying taxes) began to emerge more boldly, their ranks swelling until we caught a glimpse of this town’s trulli trove in the spectacular Monti district.
The trulli appeared on the horizon like a cluster of sun-bleached Smurf homes, decorating the hillside with a forest of charming conical rooftops. Some bore arcane painted symbols, others revealed a 21st-century desire for renovation and expansion, having been transformed into tourist accommodation.
The labyrinthine alleyways led me accidentally to the Trullo Siamese, one of the oldest trulli and one weighted down by a tragic tale of brothers torn apart by the love of the same woman. Forced to continue living together, the brothers divided the house and constructed two separate entrances. I was overtaken by an unavoidable sensation of déjà vu. A family at loggerheads, and some controversial interior design? Now where had I heard that story before?
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