THE TERRITORY
The geographic area known as Land of Trulli or Barsento extends across different villages of the province: Alberobello, Noci, Putignano and Castellana Grotte, together with Sammichele, Giocia Del Colle and Turi.
The toponym Barsento, from the Messapic Era, means tall and strong.
Its origin and the discovery of archaeologic relics have lead the origin of the place back to the pre-Hellenic era, while for some of the villages, the most recent evidences date back to the Roman period.
This area landscape, despite representing a fundamental resource for its added value to the DOCG production and for being a key element for the development of tourism and biodiversity of the production spaces - is not exactly homogenous and we can find very different typologies of agricultural production activities.
Even the sensitive landscape, which the eye can embrace in a round of horizon or - if you want, perceived with all the senses, includes a wealth of elements, either anthropic and naturalistic.
The rural and the urban areas in Terra Dei Trulli and Barsento are however closely related and the stable or active agricultural areas often keep a strong relationship with the towns, while maintaining proximity to some of the wild and natural areas.
The relationship among the towns, urban sprawl, agricultural areas and areas less cultivated and wild is experienced in this particular geographical area in an atypical continuum.
This is an extraordinarily rich area, inserted in a context in which nature is still an inescapable element.Just near Alberobello, for example, you can visit the Oasis of Bosco Selva, established in 1985 and expanded to 50 hectares of communal property. Here you will find real "monumental" trees, such as: fragno (Quercus trojana) Roverella (Quercus pubescens), which surround a hillside that slopes down like a knife into the countryside.
The natural interest in these areas is due precisely to the presence of fragno, a sub specie of quercina. Through the paths that run through the Bosco Selva you can get a load of the numerous botanical species typical of the Mediterranean. The avifauna is represented by numerous species, including the Hoopoe and the Nutcracker.
The quality of the landscape and the daily contact experience with a well spread historical and artistic heritage reaches its acme in the trulli that seem to concentrate in a stylized way this ambivalence between city and rurality, where the maintenance of expressions representing the local cultural identities, but also the value of the landscape, it’s operationally translated in the harmonious coexistence of productive activities that generates an income for the populations and protects the traditional features of the landscape and the environmental conditions.
The oldest trulli in Alberobello dates back to the fourteenth century and the dry construction, without cement, was imposed on new settlers so that their homes could be quickly dismantled: an effective method to avoid taxes on new settlements imposed by the Kingdom of Naples and at the same time it was used to profitably "guide" the development of the land.
The trulli of this geographical area are somehow also a testimony of the remarkable adaptability of man, of his genius and his propensity towards sustainable life models.
Their own architectural features are much more advanced than similar architectural artifacts found in the rest of the world, so much that today Alberobello is the only urban area made up of more than a thousand of these typical houses, now becoming permanently an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The toponym Barsento, from the Messapic Era, means tall and strong.
Its origin and the discovery of archaeologic relics have lead the origin of the place back to the pre-Hellenic era, while for some of the villages, the most recent evidences date back to the Roman period.
This area landscape, despite representing a fundamental resource for its added value to the DOCG production and for being a key element for the development of tourism and biodiversity of the production spaces - is not exactly homogenous and we can find very different typologies of agricultural production activities.
Even the sensitive landscape, which the eye can embrace in a round of horizon or - if you want, perceived with all the senses, includes a wealth of elements, either anthropic and naturalistic.
The rural and the urban areas in Terra Dei Trulli and Barsento are however closely related and the stable or active agricultural areas often keep a strong relationship with the towns, while maintaining proximity to some of the wild and natural areas.
The relationship among the towns, urban sprawl, agricultural areas and areas less cultivated and wild is experienced in this particular geographical area in an atypical continuum.
This is an extraordinarily rich area, inserted in a context in which nature is still an inescapable element.Just near Alberobello, for example, you can visit the Oasis of Bosco Selva, established in 1985 and expanded to 50 hectares of communal property. Here you will find real "monumental" trees, such as: fragno (Quercus trojana) Roverella (Quercus pubescens), which surround a hillside that slopes down like a knife into the countryside.
The natural interest in these areas is due precisely to the presence of fragno, a sub specie of quercina. Through the paths that run through the Bosco Selva you can get a load of the numerous botanical species typical of the Mediterranean. The avifauna is represented by numerous species, including the Hoopoe and the Nutcracker.
The quality of the landscape and the daily contact experience with a well spread historical and artistic heritage reaches its acme in the trulli that seem to concentrate in a stylized way this ambivalence between city and rurality, where the maintenance of expressions representing the local cultural identities, but also the value of the landscape, it’s operationally translated in the harmonious coexistence of productive activities that generates an income for the populations and protects the traditional features of the landscape and the environmental conditions.
The oldest trulli in Alberobello dates back to the fourteenth century and the dry construction, without cement, was imposed on new settlers so that their homes could be quickly dismantled: an effective method to avoid taxes on new settlements imposed by the Kingdom of Naples and at the same time it was used to profitably "guide" the development of the land.
The trulli of this geographical area are somehow also a testimony of the remarkable adaptability of man, of his genius and his propensity towards sustainable life models.
Their own architectural features are much more advanced than similar architectural artifacts found in the rest of the world, so much that today Alberobello is the only urban area made up of more than a thousand of these typical houses, now becoming permanently an UNESCO World Heritage Site.