Masseria – The Beginning

It is always hard to start writing a story

Today I would like to start from the very beginning – it was back in 2004, when the property “Casino Novello” was bought. It was a piece of land dedicated to wine production. Among the vine grapes was standing the old barons’ villa named Masseria. Do you find it similar?

Before the renovations started, the ground floor was divided into rooms dedicated to the production of oil with many olive presses, to store all kind of tools and stables. On the first floor, instead, there was
the master’s family house.
A first idea was to devote the whole property to farm horses and all equipment such as stables, paddocks, and so on.

Later on we realized that it was shameful to leave such a beautiful property abandoned, so we started some works to bring Masseria back to its original beauty. We ensured to keep the atmosphere and every single detail as it was in the past, in order to maintain the antique Salento architectural style.

We made a big effort trying to preserve all the existing architectural structures. All the rooms where we could not rebuild the typical star-shaped vaults, were instead decorated with frescoes. As you might
imagine, it took us a very long time!

Speaking of frescoes, on the first floor the enthusiastic restorers discovered a fresco of a woman, who probably was the “Baronessa”.

The whole story became more complicated when we decided to build  new properties, the hotel and the apartments, but this, is another story… (and another post on the blog!).