The Place

Where you will be.

Casa Andrea sits in the gentle hills above San Vito dei Normanni, in the heart of the Valle d'Itria, on two hectares of red earth and one hundred centenary olives. Ten minutes one way to Torre Guaceto and the Adriatic; fifteen the other to the white walls of Ostuni.

Mornings begin with the light coming low across the olives and the smell of fig and wild fennel on the air. By day the red earth holds the heat; by evening the maestrale lifts off the sea and the drystone walls give it back. This is the Valle d'Itria at its quietest — far enough from the coast roads to hear the cicadas, close enough to be swimming within ten minutes.

Everything is near, and nothing is rushed. A market town for the morning, a beach for the afternoon, a long dinner under the stars. The list below is less an itinerary than a measure of how little you need to move.