Arriving at Masseria Le Pezzate in the countryside between Maglie and Scorrano you are immediately taken with the continuity between inside and outside, and between everyday life and nature, which is the total in this house inhabited year round by Mario and Benedetta Parma.
Warm and relaxed atmosphere
Here the landscape not only influence the colors, but also the relaxed and pleasant atmosphere between the high walls of this small fortified village dating back to the V-VI century and was used up to 800 for breeding sheep and goats.
Mario and Benedetta from Rome have decided to retire in this corner of Puglia in 2006 and accommodate those who like them appreciate the rural rhythms, away from the city. Mario, with dual Turkish and Italian citizenship, has discovered nearly 15 years ago this paradise “in the world there are so many beautiful places – he says – but here in Salento people will win, with its hospitality, its immediacy, without back thought, sincere and genuine”. And along with Benedetta, who has origins of Salento, he understood to be in “the place”. Love at first sight: when they view was in total ruin, abandoned for years, but have now realized the beautiful potential.
So it started a long and laborious restoration in which you have tried to remain faithful to the origins of the building, while offering all the amenities required for a comfortable stay but especially warm.
Just around nature among olive trees, crops and many plants of prickly pears, distributed in seven hectares of land. The walls of the buildings have been restored to their original style with small windows that allow you to admire the scenery. Every corner of the farm, which develops L-shaped, overlooking the countryside, so that fills every space and all six rooms enjoy a special view of the green.
Once through the large front door, you enter the courtyard where you can even open the rooms in the old stables and the fold, as our calling “Pecoreddhe”, a suite with four-poster bed and bathroom spacious and comfortable.
The heart of the house is the living room, a large room with a barrel vault near the kitchen, with antique furniture and refined Moorish sculptures from old houses in Istanbul of Parma family, now transformed into prestigious hotels. An ideal place for refreshments and meet or for moments of reading accompanied by the warmth of a large fireplace in the winter where once were preparing cheese and, in summer the cool of the thick walls and the shadow of the verandas guaranteed by “cannizzi”.
Next to the farm is located a pajara, transformed into a comfortable small hoyuse for guests finely furnished and with a porch facing the garden in which the nature marks the passage of time between walks and swims in the large pool available to all guests of the structure.
The next morning, after resting magnificently between white and thick walls of the farmhouse just awakened from the deafening silence broken by the pleasant chirping of birds, there is breakfast served directly by Benedetta in her living room. A house in which symbols and relics recount every detail of the history of the Parma family, long active at the Sultan’s court. In fact, Mario ancestors, who moved to Istanbul from Chiavari already in the ‘700, in the beginning were selling groceries, but then Paul became the court tailors, crafting frock coats, dresses and pajamas to the sultan and his family. The story is told in a book by the English text and with magnificent images that Mario proudly shows me and tells especially the events related to the figure of Paolo Parma, businessman and first tailor of Sultan Abdulhamid, who was awarded the rosette of Grand Officer of the Order of Osmanie.
Interesting and very intriguing these events unknown to us that tell the long history of life and friendship between the Turkish and Italian communities in Constantinople over the centuries, which began at the time of the Maritime Republics. In fact, in most cases, they are descendants of the Genoese and Venetian settlers who moved into the eastern warehouses but continued to keep alive the traditions and the Italian language while speaking in turkish, greek or French, just as jovial and hospitable Mario, who also adds English, the international language today.
Masseria Le Pezzate
Contrada Gallipoli, Maglie – Lecce
Info: tel. +39 0836 460467 – +39 368 3739551
masserialepezzate@gmail.com
