The Saint with Four Heads

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I meet Barbie at the bus stop for today’s little exercise, a trip 20 kms or so inland to the small town of Alberobello. I haven’t done overly much research on this, but from what little I’ve seen it seems to be mostly notable for a few houses with conical shaped stone rooves. We walk up from the bus stop into the main square which overlooks the main group of stone topped buildings. It seems that I might perhaps have understated the case just a fraction. There are hundreds of them; an entire large village covering the whole hillside. The view is stunning. Whilst this is the main concentration, it’s certainly not the only one; there are plenty of other examples either by themselves or in small groupings all around the town, as well apparently as through much of the surrounding countryside.

The whole place looks and feels ancient, but unlike just about everywhere else we’ve been in Italy and Spain, it’s apparently not, well in relative terms at least. It was only settled in the early sixteenth century. According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, one of the early Counts wasn’t overly keen on the idea of paying building taxes to the Spanish rulers, so he issued a decree that houses here were only to be built out of dry stone without using any mortar. I’m still just a bit hazy on exactly how that got him out of paying the tax. I guess the rooves could be knocked down pretty quickly if someone saw a mob of Spanish tax collectors appear on the horizon. But what about the walls, they’d still be standing? Maybe the tax didn’t apply if your house didn’t have a roof, although that seems like a loophole that the Spaniards could have closed off pretty quickly if they’d been on their game. I think as usual I might be missing something here. About half the rooves have got religious or mythological symbols painted on them. We read that buildings with this type of construction are known as trulli. There are more than 1,500 of them in this part of Alberobello alone, and the town’s apparently the only inhabited centre where there’s an entire trulli district. The whole area is now a UNESCO declared World Heritage Site.

We walk up the hill through the maze of narrow alleyways, all of which are lined almost exclusively with trulli. There’s a church at the top of the hill. That’s also got a trulli style roof, as well as a relatively simple interior, so it’s totally in keeping with its surroundings despite being a relatively recent 1920s addition to the area.

We walk back through the main part of town into the main church, the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian. It’s also a relatively new structure dating from around 1880, and was apparently built on the site of an early seventeenth century chapel. I’ve never heard of Saints Cosmas and Damian, but I read that they were a couple of Roman doctors who became martyrs when they were beheaded in 303 AD.

I’ve always been a bit curious about saints, their supposed relics, and their so-called “cults”. Some of Cosmas and Damian’s relics are supposedly housed here, but it’s not clear exactly what they are. It seems that for something to be classified as a saintly relic it generally needs to be either a saint’s body part, something that they wore, or something that came into direct contact with either them or their possessions. I’ve always wondered how a lot of the alleged relics could possibly be authenticated, and it seems I‘m right to be curious. I remember when we were in Valencia last year that the Cathedral there claimed to have the Holy Grail … as apparently do three other churches around the globe. Other examples include four claims to the head of St George, and a guy called St Nestor’s clearly popular - eight churches claim to have one of his feet. Anyway Cosmas and Damien were apparently great doctors who wanted nothing in return for their services, so they were clearly very good guys. They’re the patron saints of doctors, surgeons, dentists and pharmacists, which makes sense. But it seems they’re also the patron saints of “confectioners” - not sure what the dentists might have to say about that one - and “barbers, and against hernias and bedsores”. Hmmm.

We board the bus for the long and winding trip back to Monopoli. Other than the scenery, the most notable thing about this trip is that the bus driver appears to be sitting on a pogo stick. He’s bouncing up and down like there’s no tomorrow. We don’t think the steering wheel, brake and accelerator are bouncing up and down with him, so hopefully his foot won’t lose contact with the pedals as we’re about to plough headlong into the back of a truck. Surely he’s just got to get seasick bouncing up and down like that. Not for the first time today I think I might be missing something.

Meanwhile back in Monopoli and Issy’s managed to book herself in for a hairdresser’s appointment tomorrow. She said the hairdresser didn’t speak a word of English, so she had to tell her what she wanted done via the Google Translator. This’ll be interesting. I hope I’ll still recognise my beloved when she comes back with her blonde locks dyed green.

We enjoy our final meal with Barbie on the rooftop terrace of a restaurant right above the water. We’ve had a great time with her, and the farewells get a bit teary.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Beautiful architecture
Lovely

[DaveandIssy]

Alberobello
Fascinating place. Could highly recommend if you’re ever in that neck of the woods. Thanks for reading.