How far is Alberobello from Ostuni and Cisternino?

From Cisternino it is about 15 km, twenty minutes. From Ostuni it is about 30 km, forty minutes by car. Locorotondo is 9 km away on the same road, so the two are easily combined.

Is Alberobello worth visiting?

Yes, once, and at the right hour. The scale of it, a whole town of cones, is something no photograph prepares you for. But the valley’s trulli are not there; they are in the fields around your house, and you will see more of them on the drive than in the town.

There are paid car parks on Via Indipendenza and around Largo Martellotta at the foot of the Rione Monti. In summer they fill by mid morning, which is one more reason to come early.

The valleyTown

Alberobello

Alberobello is the town where the trulli stopped being farmhouses and became a whole town: around 1,500 conical stone roofs packed into two hillside districts, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. It is the most visited place in Valle d’Itria, and the one to see early in the morning or at dusk, when it is quiet.

The two districts

The Rione Monti is the one in the photographs: a thousand trulli climbing a hill in rows, most of them now shops, with a trullo-shaped church at the top. Across the main road the Aia Piccola is smaller, quieter, and still lived in; its four hundred trulli have washing on the lines and no souvenirs in the windows, and it is the half of Alberobello that shows you what the town was. Walk the Monti first for the spectacle, then cross over and stay a while.

The Trullo Sovrano

On the north side of the town, behind the main church, the Trullo Sovrano is the only trullo built with two floors, an eighteenth-century house for a priest’s family with a staircase inside the cone. It is furnished as it would have been and takes twenty minutes to see, and it is the best way to understand how a trullo was actually lived in before the shops arrived.

When to go

Alberobello is busy from ten in the morning until the coaches leave around six. Come before nine, when the streets are being swept and the light is low across the cones, or come for dinner and see the roofs lit from below. Half a day is enough; the trulli people live in are in the countryside, and that is where you are staying.

Good to know

How far is Alberobello from Ostuni and Cisternino?: From Cisternino it is about 15 km, twenty minutes. From Ostuni it is about 30 km, forty minutes by car. Locorotondo is 9 km away on the same road, so the two are easily combined.
Is Alberobello worth visiting?: Yes, once, and at the right hour. The scale of it, a whole town of cones, is something no photograph prepares you for. But the valley’s trulli are not there; they are in the fields around your house, and you will see more of them on the drive than in the town.
Where do I park?: There are paid car parks on Via Indipendenza and around Largo Martellotta at the foot of the Rione Monti. In summer they fill by mid morning, which is one more reason to come early.

The beaches near Ostuni

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