Discover the wonders of Salento
In the Salento of the great farmers, with their simple lives in daily contact with nature, resources they had were never wasted. They set about using the limestone rocks that surfaced abundantly from the red earth. And you can still see it today, used for the construction of walls to separate one field from another, one house from another, or to build pajares.
The master paretari – or masons – are dry building experts and very jealous of the tricks of the trade. Learning them requires a long apprenticeship and it is very much an art that is handed down from father to son. You have to know how to cut the stones in the right way, insert them correctly … and the results are sometimes so perfect, so harmonious and geometric, that looking at them you can really sense the poetry springing from the artisan’s heart.
From the simplicity and elegance with which the drystone walls zig zag across the Salento landscape, architecture has learned so much. It is no coincidence that our churches, palaces, and castles are made of stone, with no stucco or frills.
The Montirò Hotel, too, has taken its inspiration from these beautiful, ancient drystone structures. The hotel’s exposed white and pinkish stone walls seem to be woven together like a fine cloth, and the columns bathed in the Salento sunshine are also in stone, as are the low walls along the paths in our gardens and around the flowerbeds.
Simple stone, without decorations, without additions, seems to represent the very soul of Salento: strong, resistant, elegant, beautiful and humble.
The Montirò Hotel, set deep in the Leuca countryside, awaits you in all its elegance and simplicity for a holiday full of beauty, art and total relaxation.