The Coolidge examiner., 1930-11-28


! the material.
The farmer by gathering up this
| material for his house helps to
clear his lands, and so places more
soil at his disposition for cultiva-
tiOn. Moreover, construction costs
nothing but time, for each farmer
builds his own trullO without the
expense of architect or mason.
Finally, it is a building which
seems TO stand indefinitely, with a
minimum of repair.
In the region Of the trulli one
searches the landscape in vain for
houses which are not trulli There
are no others In every direction
one sees only their quaint cOnical
roofs. And, by one of the curiosi-
| ties of structural custom here, one
may, even at distance, tell at a
glance of how many rooms each
house consists; for, if it have more
| than one room, then each additional
room has its own conical roof.
/ The trullo with one cone may rep
resent a stOrehOuse, or an animal
shelter, or the dwelling of one of
the poorest cOntadini Country
folk). According to the means of
/ the builder or the increasing size of
his family, as he adds rooms he
adds a cone above each of them {;
so that larger trulli present a fam
lily group of two or three or four,
or even of seven or eight, cones in
each domestic unit.
These houses make an instant ap-
peal to the Imagination. In the
little commune of Martina Franco
alone there are more trulli in the
% miles from Francavilla to Albero-
| bellO, the extent of the Playa del
Trulli (RegiOn of the Trulli), than
there are nuraghi in the entire is
land of Sardinia.
Look Like Giant Beehives.
AS one looks our upon the bewil-
| dering multitude of the strange cot
tages, cone or a group of cones
every few hundred feet in all di-
rections, for miles and miles, the
effect is without parallel. 1t sug-
gests not only world of queer pre-
historic tombs, or giant beehives,
or titanic candle snuffers, but a
world of petrified haystacks, or a
vast military camp of ancient Ro-
man tents, abandoned and turned
to stone. 1t is difficult to tell
whether the effect is elfin or Gar
gantuan, but it is wholly unreal
and indescribably fascinating.
One is at first astonished by the
apparently needless waste of ma
terial and effort that goes into the
building of trullo. Its side walls,
though seldom so high as eight feet,
vary in thickness from five to as
much as seven feet This might
be interpreted as survival of an
age of defended habitations, but in
reality the explanation lies in the
tiller's necessity to rid his land of
rocks, so that he may cultivate it's
rich, lime-:aden soil.
| Nowhere in trulliland is to be
seen mole than single entrance
door in the entire walled circum-
ference of even the largest trullo.
OF windows, even under a group
of cones indicating several rooms,
there are few worthy of the name.
Occasionally an opening appears in
the wall, but it is rarely more than
10 inches square, and the wall about
it is so thick that only a minimum
of light and not any sunshine can
enter.
When one looks through such a
window, he can believe that he is
looking through a rectangular pipe,
and the scrap of landscape in the
distance suggests the reflection of
a kodak finder.
Laid Without Mortar.
The door is generally not more
than the height of a south Italians
head, and the Intel is horizontal.
The variation on this, in the more
pretentious trulli, is uniform. 1t
opens for a deep round arch. The
inner end of this arch is walled and
a thin secondary wall is pierced by
a small rectangular door.
The stones are laid fiat, without
mortar or cement, and there is no
suggestion of a keystone. How,
then, is this conical dome sus-
tanned?
Examine a trullo in course of
construction and the explanation.
like the explanation of so many
other marvels, becomes simple. The
builders chisel each and every stone
in keystone fashion. They lay them
circlewise in an ascending and di-
minishing spiral. Every stone in
the dome of trullo is a keystone,
for each one wedges the other. This
geometrical construction makes it
more solid than cement.
Another astonishing thing is that
the rough, heavy states are usually
laid two and often three stones to
the width Of course. the courses
circling and narrowing in diane
ter as they approach the top.
The higher and more slender the
cone, the more beautiful and grace
full it is; but 1t is the squatter cones
which especially excite wonder as
to how these dry, unkeyed struc-
| kuroc hold fboncoluo1 M