If you’re hunting for a property in Italy that’s a little bit special, the conical, stone “trulli” you find in the southern region of Puglia could be the answer and right now they’re especially affordable.

Trulli, or trullo in the singular, are unique to Puglia and so treasured that the town of Alberobello, which has the largest concentration of them of all towns in the region, is a Unesco World Heritage site. The countryside around the nearby towns of Martina Franca, Ceglie Messapica and Ostuni is also dotted with these quirky buildings.

Trulli are famed for their shape and drywall (mortarless) construction, a prehistoric building technique still in use in Puglia and which apparently evolved through locals’ need to de-construct their homes easily to avoid tax. Typically they are made of roughly worked limestone boulders collected from fields and will feature pyramidal, domed or conical roofs built up of corbelled limestone slabs.

Available in various states of repair and usually with a plot of land with fruit trees, prices for trulli in need of a complete rebuild start at around €30,000. Michele Torroni at Ceglie Messapica-based agent Keen on Puglia, which has a selection of trulli for sale, says while the market is quiet, a new planning plan due in a year should liven the market up. So strike while prices are still low.

For details of more property in Italy, visit the Italy listing on Rightmove Overseas. One way to save money when buying property in Italy is to use a currency specialist when transferring your pounds into euros to complete the purchase. For more information on this, contact Smart Currency Exchange.

To understand the full step-by-step process to buying a property in Italy, collect The Overseas Guides Company’s ‘Italy Property Buying Guide’