The Valle d'Itria, Beyond Alberobello: Where to Go in Trulli Country

The Valle d'Itria is the green, dry-stone-walled plateau between the Adriatic and the Ionian where the trulli grow — those conical, mortarless stone houses with the whitewashed cones, scattered through the olive groves like something from a fable. It's the country of Moroseta, the two Torres, Vista Ostuni, San Michele and Mascienda, and it has one very famous town: Alberobello, whose trulli-packed old quarter is a UNESCO site and, by mid-morning in summer, a slow-moving river of tour groups. Go — it really is remarkable — but go early, and then go elsewhere.

Elsewhere starts with Locorotondo, the "round town," a tight white circle of a hill town with flower-hung balconies and a white wine of its own, the crisp Locorotondo DOC. Taste it where it's made: the Cantina del Locorotondo, the town's cooperative cantina, pours and sells the Verdeca and Bianco d'Alessano blend right in the center — co-op wine, made by the families who grow it, for the price of a fancy coffee back home.

Cisternino is where you eat, and the institution is the fornello pronto: you pick your meat at a butcher's counter and they grill it on the spot while you sit at a paper-covered table with a carafe of red. Go to Zio Pietro, on Via Duca d'Aosta — the family macelleria credited with inventing the format in town — and order the bombette, little rolled parcels of pork wrapped around cheese. It is one of the great cheap pleasures of the south, and worth planning a night around.

Martina Franca is the grand one — baroque palazzi and churches in pale stone, and, every summer, the Festival della Valle d'Itria, a serious opera festival that fills the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale with voices under the stars. It also lends its name to a cured pork worth carrying off: capocollo di Martina Franca, a Slow Food Presidium, made by families like Salumificio Santoro, whose shop will cut you some to take home.

Ostuni, the White City spilling down its hill in lime-washed lanes, completes the set. Its old town is tourist territory, no question — but Osteria del Tempo Perso, a traditional Pugliese table in a sixteenth-century cave, going since 1983, is the one that earns its place there: generous, local, and not remotely a tasting menu.

The pleasure of the valley is that the towns sit ten or fifteen minutes apart, so a single day can hold your early morning at the trulli, a bombetta lunch off Zio Pietro's grill, an aperitivo with a glass of Locorotondo on a balcony, and dinner back at the masseria. Just don't let Alberobello be the whole of it — the valley's real pleasures are the named doors a quarter-hour from the crowd.