Early walk with spectacular sunrise colors along the Vieste cliffs,
Day 5 on to Alberobello and Matera
Day 5 on to Alberobello and Matera
Mhairi checks out the breakfast choices and will be ready to head south in our rolling home on coastal road
The original purpose for the dry construction allowed hut removal to beat paying a king's land taxes during the middle ages. Existing huts could also be easily expanded when necessary by adding more trulli onto the structure. Many of the trulli now are commercial establishments. A museum gave a birds eye view of family life in a trulli in an earlier time. Another trulli house is a wine shop where we enjoyed a wine tasting and sampled a series of local foods served as delicious hors d'oeuvres'
Our Trulli hi lites.
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In Matera we walked from our bus drop off into the Sassi (cave dwellings). Hotel San Martino had lots of stairs to climb to reach our rooms. The hotel hangs on a cliff side with many rooms carved into the soft volcanic tufa. The river cut tufa lined canyon has provided a cliffside living site for nine thousand years back into the Bronze Age. In the 1950's thousands of poverty stricken cave dwelling, malaria riddled residents were moved to more modern housing by the government. Then in the 1990's the Sassi was declared a World Heritage site. This drew more tourists and resulted in a cultural museum. Many dwellings have been updated with plumbing, electricity and additional modern conveniences like our pleasant Hotel San Martino rooms.