Rione Monti at dawn

Rione Monti is the larger of Alberobello's two trulli quarters: about a thousand houses on a slope, arranged along eight parallel lanes that climb from the main road to the church of Sant'Antonio at the top. Whitewashed walls, grey stone cones, and symbols painted on many of the roofs in lime.

By ten in the morning most of the ground-floor rooms are souvenir shops with racks outside, and the lanes are full. Before eight none of that exists: the shutters are down, the lanes are empty, and the whitewash is the coldest, cleanest white it will be all day. The lanes run roughly north-south, so early light comes along them rather than across, and the stepped perspective with cones on both sides is the frame to work.

The climb to Sant'Antonio is continuous and stepped, and the surfaces are smooth worn stone that is slippery in the wet — flat shoes matter. Everything is public and free; some individual trulli are museums or shops with their own hours. If the session includes people who cannot manage steps, work the lower lanes and the belvedere instead, both of which are close to level.