Casa Soleto offers a truly authentic experience of “the village life” in the heart of Salento, Puglia. The noble palazzotto has been lovingly restored by Studio Andrew Trotter and Marcelo Martínez. They took time with the renovation to carefully preserve the historic features of the house, while bringing it into the twenty-first century. 

Having kept most of the original floors, the nonna’s kitchen or the internal doors (two of them being three hundred years old), Casa Soleto has all the charm and character you would expect of a house from the seventeenth century.. This is a truly authentic experience. A haven to relax during your trip. A barefoot luxury.

Often it is only grand houses that have gardens in the town, but this was a perfect size of around 220 square meters, with a front patio and a back courtyard garden. The house was charming. The street front had all the baroque details of a small palazzo, and inside it was like time stood still. The rooms with high vaulted ceilings were full of furniture, books, clothes and old photos of the family. The house hadn’t been lived in for over 20 years but felt like all it needed was a bit of love and we could move right in. 

Parts of the house were over 400 years old. The room behind the kitchen would have been a chapel back in the days, so the family didn’t need to leave the house to pray. The house is quite a labyrinth, and you need to go into the front patio and up the outside staircase to reach the bedrooms. But this is the charm of the old houses, with not one straight wall in sight.