a 'dovecote tower' for roosting pigeons, vic. Nardo'

…at the masseria I visited late this afternoon near Nardo’ must be the coolest thing I have seen on my Puglia adventures so far – an Animal Estate of the most sophisticated and monumental sort, which from the outside seems to be a fortified castle tower, only to reveal a surprising very contemporary-seeming interior lined entirely in a gridded pattern of cubical cavities for pigeons (a variety known as ‘colombi’ in Italian – before the pesky  sort we are familiar with today whose eggs would make us sick from all of the toxic urban crap they eat) to make themselves at home (up to 1000 couples!) and lay eggs to be harvested by humans by way of cleverly designed stairs wrapping the perimeter at various intervals.