Specialty coffee in Alberobello

For two centuries Alberobello did not exist on paper: the Acquaviva counts made the peasants build their houses out of dry-laid stone, without a gram of mortar, because a settlement with no permanent buildings did not count as a town and paid the king no tax. Freedom came in 1797, and Francesco D'Amore started laying his house in mortar on the very day the residents were electing their first mayor. On the facade he had it carved in Latin that this was the first building raised by the king's will; today it houses the tourist information office. The conical roofs that draw half the world here are a leftover from a ban, not from an idea.