Puglia is having un momento. For the past couple of decades, the region—Apulia to locals—has been notching up accolades as an evolving travel hotspot and a Southern Italian alternative to Tuscany. With its architecture and design, rustic cucina povera and robust red wines, UNESCO designations and burgeoning hospitality sector, this slender finger of coast and rolling countryside—the heel and ankle of Italy's boot—is suddenly, it seems, capturing the kind of global attention it has long deserved.
In May of this year, the Financial Times held its Business of Luxury Summit at the acclaimed Borgo Egnazia resort—the same venue used for the 50th G7 Summit in 2024. Proof, if any more were needed, of the region's increasingly global reputation.
It wasn't always thus. Post-unification in 1861, the largely agricultural region was considerably poorer than Italy's northern centers of finance. Fortunes turned around in the 2010s, when new flight routes brought sun-seeking international tourists to Bari and Brindisi, gateways for exploration.
The Slow Food Movement, originating in Rome in 1986, arrived in Puglia a few years later and birthed agriturismo. (Tell that to the nonnas, who have been slow-fooding for centuries, without the need for any official designation). Ancient olive-groved masserie (farmhouses) began to welcome pelotons of foodie cyclists, pedalling from table to table, replenishing calories and later boring everyone back home about the intensity of new-harvest olive oil, the dazzling 'white city' of Ostuni and the fairytale trulli homes of Alberobello, the UNESCO World Heritage Site on every traveler's Puglia itinerary.
An altogether different category of masseria, known as Villa Dusenszky Vitale, provides more evidence of Puglia as a place where tradition welcomes a tasteful revolution. The estate, on the market for €18 million (around $20.9 million) for the first time in over 20 years, blends a restored manor house and outbuildings with a spectacular white-washed, gallery-like modern extension that tucks into a 20-hectare landscape of olive trees, cypresses and gently sloping countryside—just the thing for a world-class collection of arresting artworks.
This is a rare private Puglian estate made from "years and years of travel and acquired culture and taste," says Roberta Vitale of her parents' considered approach to collecting and curating. "It's the result of very deep research and there's not a single thing in the house that wasn't chosen by my parents, mainly my mother. And when you're there, you feel and breathe a certain culture, a certain taste, a certain elegance."
Guido Roberto Vitale and Luciana Dusenszky, were, says their daughter, "lucky enough to travel the world." Treasures collected on those travels—sculptures, paintings, decorative artworks and crafted objects adorn the spaces indoors and out—have created a sort of museum catalogue of this family's adventurous life. One artwork, an installation that seems to rise from the ground, originated from an initiative of the 8th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002. Reconstructed on the grounds of Villa Vitale as a permanent exhibition, "Scatola di Luce" (Box of Light), conceived by the artist Erich Demetz, features repeated verses from a poem engraved within its walls: "Everyone stands alone on the heart of the earth, pierced by a ray of sunlight, and suddenly it's evening…"
The Vitales' connection with architecture is strong. Roberta recalls her parents visiting friends in Sicily who lived in "a magnificent home. They asked who the architect was, got in touch with him and he ended up creating this very special project." That architect was Vincenzo Melluso, the same man who built the "Box of Light" that now stands on the grounds. But the villa project was not completed entirely on his own, she adds. "My parents were both very strong-minded and they had a say in everything."
Roberta herself also had an influence on the way the three main buildings interconnect through gallery-like corridors. When pregnant with her daughter, Roberta recalls, "I thought it was insane that I would have to get dressed and dress my newborn daughter in order to go from my bedroom to the kitchen or the dining room. So I told my parents they had to find a way to connect the different buildings."
Domestic travel sorted, the connecting corridors—natural channels of ventilation—also serve as cocoons against extreme temperatures. "People think Puglia is very hot all the time, but here it's not true. We are 300 meters above sea level and the temperature can drop dramatically at night, in both summer and winter."
In between coastal Ostuni and the hilltop village of Cisternino in Puglia's pretty, olive-groved and vineyard-rich Valle d'Itria, Villa Vitale's 3,500 square meters (over 37,000 square feet) feel more intimate than that kind of footprint sounds. It's a property that demands big gatherings: 13 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms, a heated indoor pool and a series of entertaining spaces spread across its stone and glass structures in a triumphantly elegant blend of traditional and contemporary architecture.
Outside, over a seemingly endless stretch of land (20 hectares is about 28 football pitches) there are pavilions, lawns, a tennis court, staff accommodation. A large swimming pool shaped, says Roberta, "like a little lake." Shaded seats and loungers and dining tables for long lunches. A citrus garden. Multiple vegetable gardens. And those olive trees. "We also grow wheat within the property," Roberta adds, "so it can be a sustainable place with zero food kilometers in the real sense."
Leaving such an idyll and gentle way of living must be bittersweet for Roberta and her family. "Yes, but the thing I love is that it's all credit to my parents. My own credit, which is not little, is that I've tried to maintain the property as they intended it. I would never have been able to do something like this myself—and the enduring beauty of it is all thanks to my parents and their discernment and creative vision."
Villa Dusenszky Vitale is on the market for €18 million (~$20.9 million), represented by Chiara Gennarelli of Building Heritage and Billy Nash of The Keyes Company. Both firms are members of Forbes Global Properties, the invitation-only network of top-tier brokerages worldwide and the exclusive real estate partner of Forbes.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com