Church of St. Anthony of Padua

The Church of St. Anthony is a Greek-cross church located at the top of the Monti district, unique in that it is made entirely of trulli. Its construction is quite recent, in fact it was built in 1927. The contrast between the north side of Largo Martellotta, "new" and more "progressive" compared to the south side, entirely made of trulli, was still very much felt at the time. To obviate the inconvenience of the inhabitants of Rione Monti to travel to the more distant and "bourgeois" Church of Santi Medici, the local parish priest decided to have a church built for what was Alberobello's poor neighborhood. In fact, in Rione Monti since 1910, the date of its election as a national monument, it was forbidden to build dwellings of any type other than trullo and thus constituted the poor quarter of Alberobello. Throughout the years from the postwar period to the 1980s, the common conception of the trullo as an expression of poverty and backwardness persisted, a conception that led to the demolition of hundreds of trulli outside the monumental areas in favor of "modern" constructions. Neighborhoods around the Santi Medici church and northeast of the town, once built entirely of trulli, no longer exist today.