Palazzo Ducale Venturi

If you were a screenwriter looking for inspiration, there would be no better place than Palazzo Venturi and Salento to find incredible, compelling and different stories. It wouldn’t be difficult to find characters to narrate, digging through thousands of years of stories. Levantine merchants, Arab corsairs, Roman officers, Greek philosophers, Earls and Viceroys, Chief Nuns and Norman gentlemen. Salento is full of stories to listen to, for those who can catch them on the fly. Palazzo Ducale Venturi is an ascetic sixteenth-century building, erect in 1500 as a settlement for the Knights Templar and then a medieval fortress. It’s a real fortified house that has preserved proudly its sagas still today. You can still see the machicolations over the windows on the facade, to defend the palace and people who lived there against enemy attacks. But it’s also a magnificent building with enormous artistic value, something that the owner, who embarked in a massive renovation, immediately recognized. Palazzo Ducale Venturi is one of the first stately homes in Salento to open its doors and welcome guests in the luxurious and aristocratic world of five centuries of history, art and culture. The Palazzo has been completely restored under the supervision of the Authority for Cultural Heritage, managing to recover two antique salt ovens, some fireplaces, the star-vaulted ceilings in Lecce stone, and the original floors with the “chianche” (blocks of local old stone). Today the noble home is available for all those who dream of unique moments spent in a fascinating place, full of history, art, legends, and cuddled by its many services. All this in the magic borgo of Minervino, nestled between majestic olive trees and lush vineyards.

The most distant point of the Italian boot, Salento is closer to Greece than to Florence. Here the luxuriant greenery of Valle d’Itria gives way to flat tracks blurred with wildflowers in spring, and endless olive groves.

In Salento, you will find Minervino, 12 km south of Otranto and 6 km from the sea. Minervino unveils its history through Renaissance and Baroque churches, fortresses transformed into noble residences, dolmens and menhirs.