The Valle d'Itria is not really a valley. It is a shallow limestone basin between two low ridges, filled with olive groves, vineyards, dry stone walls and several thousand small conical houses that look like nothing else in Europe.

This is where we cook, and where most of our guests are staying without quite knowing what they are in the middle of. So: a guide written by people who live here rather than visit, including the parts that guidebooks leave out because they are unglamorous.

What a trullo actually is

A trullo is a single room with a conical roof, built from limestone gathered off the field it stands in and laid dry, without mortar.

The cone is self-supporting. Each ring of stones leans slightly inward on the one below, a corbelled vault, until a single stone at the apex locks the whole thing in place. The technique is old, far older than the buildings you see, and versions of it turn up all around the Mediterranean wherever there is flat stone and no timber.

Why they were built

Not to be charming. They were field shelters and farmhouses, made of the only material available, by people clearing stones off ground they wanted to plough. Two problems solved at once: somewhere to put the stones, somewhere to sleep.

The thick walls hold the night's cool well into the afternoon and the day's warmth into the evening, which is not a small thing in July. A trullo interior in August is genuinely cold, and the first time you step into one from the sun it feels like a trick.

The tax story

You will be told, everywhere, that trulli were built without mortar so they could be pulled down quickly when the tax inspector came, a permanent dwelling being taxable and a pile of stones not.

It is a wonderful story. Historians are unconvinced, and the dry stone technique is far older than the tax it supposedly dodged. Enjoy it as folklore and do not repeat it as fact at dinner.

The symbols on the roofs

Many cones carry a whitewashed mark: a cross, a heart, a crescent, an eye, something astrological. Explanations range from religious protection to family signatures to pure decoration added for tourists in the last century, and the honest answer is that nobody knows for certain about most of them.

The towns, and when to go to each

Alberobello

Over a thousand trulli packed into two neighbourhoods, protected as a World Heritage site since the mid-nineties. Genuinely extraordinary, and between roughly ten and five in high season, extraordinarily crowded.

Go early or late. At seven or eight in the morning the Rione Monti is almost empty, the light is low and you can hear your own footsteps on the stone. At dusk, after the coaches have left, the whitewash goes pink and the town belongs to the people who live in it again.

Cross to Aia Piccola. The quieter of the two quarters, still largely residential, and the one that gives you a sense of how the place actually works.

Accept the main street. It is a souvenir shop from end to end. Walk up it once for the view, then turn off it and stop expecting anything else.

Locorotondo

The old town is built in a circle, which is where the name comes from, and it is one of the rare places that looks exactly as good as its photographs. Whitewashed, spotless, with pointed gabled roofs found almost nowhere else, and terraces on the western edge that fall away over the whole valley.

It is also a wine town. The white made here is crisp, low in alcohol and inexpensive, and it is what everybody drinks cold on a hot evening. An hour before sunset on the belvedere is the best free thing in the valley.

Martina Franca

The largest and the grandest, with a baroque quarter that feels like a different region entirely: carved balconies, curled stonework, a ducal palace, and streets that open suddenly into squares. Look up constantly, because the best of it is above eye level.

Two things to know. It is the home of capocollo, cured pork neck, among the best salumi in the south, and worth buying where it is made rather than in a supermarket. And every summer the town fills for an opera festival, which is the one period when it is busier than Alberobello and considerably more interesting.

Cisternino

Small, white, tangled, and the place to eat meat. The tradition is the fornello pronto: you choose your cut at the butcher's counter, they grill it over wood there and then, and you sit down in the room behind the shop to eat it with bread, a jug of wine and no ceremony at all.

Ask for bombette, small rolls of pork wrapped around cheese. Go late, go hungry, and plan nothing for afterwards.

Ostuni

Not strictly in the valley, a little further towards the sea, and the famous white one: stacked on a hill above a plain of olive trees, visible from a long way off and beautiful in a way that photographs cannot quite overstate.

Steep once you are inside it, and the busiest place in the area in August. Comfortable shoes, water, and the evening rather than the middle of the day.

Ceglie Messapica

Just outside the valley, and with a reputation for food out of all proportion to its size: several of the region's best-known kitchens are here. Also the home of the biscotto cegliese, an almond biscuit with jam, which is worth the detour on its own.

What to do that is not a town

Drive the small roads

Between Locorotondo and Martina Franca, or Cisternino and Ceglie, with no particular destination. Dry stone walls, iron gates, isolated trulli standing in the middle of vineyards, and the occasional enormous olive tree that has clearly been there since before anything else around it.

This is the landscape people remember afterwards, and it costs nothing. Go slowly; the roads are narrow and there is usually a tractor.

Go to a market

Every town has its day, usually starting at dawn and finished by lunchtime. Half an hour among the vegetables tells you more about how people eat here than any restaurant will, and it is the fastest way to understand why the menus change.

Look for what there is a lot of. That is what is in season, and that is what to order for the rest of the week.

Visit a working farm, not a converted one

A masseria is a fortified farmhouse, and many of the beautiful ones are now hotels. The ones still working are less photogenic and much more interesting: a dairy at seven in the morning, a flock of sheep crossing the road, cheese sold warm at the door.

The sea, which is closer than you think

Both coasts are within an hour. The Adriatic side, towards Monopoli and Polignano, is rocky, clear and dramatic. The Ionian side, towards Taranto, is sandier and shallower, which suits small children. Neither is more than a day out, and neither should be attempted between one and four in August unless you enjoy queueing.

Sleeping in a trullo, honestly

Most visitors to the valley stay in one, and it is worth knowing what you are getting before you book.

What is wonderful about it

The cool, first of all. A well-restored trullo in August needs no air conditioning at all, and sleeping under a stone cone with the window open is genuinely lovely. The proportions are unusual and calming: small rooms, thick walls, deep window recesses, and a quality of light that photographs badly and feels wonderful.

What surprises people

  • They are dark. Small windows are inherent to the structure, not a restoration choice.
  • They are damp-prone. Stone, no cavity, no damp course. A good restoration manages it; a hurried one smells of it.
  • Rooms are separate cones. Charming, and it means walking outside to get from bedroom to bathroom in some properties. Check the floor plan if that matters to you.
  • Kitchens are often small, for the reason above. Relevant if you plan to cook, or to have somebody cook for you.
  • They are in the countryside. Which means a car, an unmade track, and no streetlights. The night sky is a fair exchange.

A masseria, a fortified farmhouse converted into a hotel, is the other classic choice: more space, more services, more conventional rooms, and usually a pool. Neither is better. They are different holidays.

Worth the drive, just outside the valley

  • Polignano a Mare (about 40 minutes). A town on a cliff above a cove, spectacular and very busy. Go early, swim, leave before lunch.
  • Monopoli (40 minutes). A working port with a beautiful old town, and rather more life and less queueing than its famous neighbour.
  • Grotte di Castellana (25 minutes). An enormous cave system, and the best possible plan for the one rainy day or for the hottest afternoon of the trip. Book the long tour and take a jumper.
  • Matera (about 1 hour 45). Not in Puglia and not in this valley, but close enough for a long day out and unlike anywhere else in Italy. Go late in the afternoon and stay for the evening.
  • Lecce (1 hour 30). The baroque city of the south, best in the cooler months.

When to come

  • May, June. Warm, green, everything open, sea just about swimmable by June. Probably the best window of the year.
  • September, early October. Hot without being punishing, the sea at its warmest, the grape harvest, and far fewer people.
  • July, August. Very hot and very full. Italians take their own holidays in August, so the towns are lively in the evening and unbearable at midday. Book everything.
  • Winter. Underrated. Cool, quiet, sometimes wet, and the season of the food this region is proudest of: turnip tops, wild chicory, braises, new oil, citrus. Almost nobody comes, which is most of the point.

Practical notes nobody mentions

  • You need a car. Public transport between the towns exists and is not designed for visitors. There is a small local railway, which is charming and slow.
  • Lunch closes. Roughly one to four, shops included. Plan around it rather than being surprised by it every day.
  • Sunday lunch is the meal of the week. Book it.
  • Cash still matters in small places, markets especially.
  • Distances are short. Nothing in this guide is more than forty minutes from anything else, which is why the valley works so well as a base.

Eat with someone from here

The fastest way to understand a landscape is through what it grows. Spend a morning cooking what the market had, or a day among the producers we buy from, and the valley stops being scenery and starts making sense: why the walls are where they are, why the bread keeps for a week, why everybody has an opinion about bitterness.

After that, the drive between two towns is a different drive.