What would Puglia be without its typical dry stone walls?
The dry-stone walls are present all over the world and represent the first example of an artifact by man.
With the dry-stone walls were built the first shelters, then temples, churches, buildings of all kinds. Already the ancient Greeks, and then the Romans, used miles and miles of dry stone walls to delimit borders, build buildings or to change the land to be cultivated.
Throughout Italy you can find this type of artifacts, from the north to the extreme south.
Types of dry stone walls
Two types of drywall constructions can be distinguished:
- a wall built with selected local rough stones of various shapes and sizes
- a wall built with semi-processed or worked stones of considerable size, even of different origin from the place of construction.
In order to begin to build a dry stone wall you start by first digging the earth for the entire length that will be necessary and the width of the future wall.
The larger stones are placed underneath, as if they were the foundations, and the smaller ones upwards. All the stones are placed on top of each other without the use of a binder, such as cement or lime. However, little “stones” are excluded and will be used only to fill the spaces between the various stones.
In the case of a wall whose stones are semi-processed there is the need to square the same stones so that they match each other perfectly. To do this, a bundle and a chisel are used. But above all here the real difference is made by the master who works the various stones.
Dry stone walls in Puglia
In particular in Puglia the use of dry stone walls has given life to the typical and very famous Trulli buildings.
Here the walls not only represent and demarcate the boundaries between the various land but also serve as a filter between two levels of land in case of heavy rain. In fact, in these cases, water filters through the spaces between the various stones and flows less impetuously into the lower level soil.
The dry-stone walls are so important and valuable in this region that in 2013 the same region approved a resolution with technical guidelines for the restoration of dry-stone walls in protected natural areas and Natura 2000 sites, also providing contributions in the five-year period from 2007 to 2013.
To delimit our Trullo EVO we decided to use the same old method of dry stone walls. Every stone you will see has been positioned by hand. Behind every stone there is commitment, organization and history.
