RELAIS
MASSERIA
GINEVRA

For Nicola and Elisa, a couple from L’Aquila with a background in hospitality, their first encounter with Salento was supposed to be brief. A short visit. A few nights at the Masseria. Nothing more.

Instead, it changed the course of their lives.

Almost immediately, they began to imagine what it might be like to start something new here — not simply another hotel, but a project they could build together as a family. The Masseria seemed to offer precisely the ingredients they were looking for: authenticity, beauty, history and the rare sense that time moves a little differently in this corner of Puglia.

Two weeks after their first nights as guests, the improbable happened. The dream became reality.

Through a remarkable sequence of circumstances — part opportunity, part coincidence, part fate — Nicola and Elisa found themselves not returning home as visitors, but preparing to become the new custodians of the Masseria.

Guests one week. Hosts the next.

Sometimes life writes a better itinerary than we could have planned ourselves.

A PLACE WITH A PAST

Long before Nicola and Elisa arrived, the Masseria had already travelled quite a distance.

Its story is intertwined with that of Antonio Augusto Vetrugno, born in 1946 in the nearby Salento countryside and taken to Belgium as an eleven-year-old boy, where he joined his parents. His father, Giuseppe “Pippi”, had gone to Belgium to work in the mines.

Antonio Augusto grew up between two worlds.

Italy remained the landscape of his childhood and memory; Belgium became the place where he built his professional life, first as an entrepreneur and later in tourism. Decades after leaving, he returned to Salento with a desire to give something back to the land from which his story had begun.

The Masseria became part of that homecoming.

His vision was deliberately international: the architecture and traditions of Puglia would remain at the heart of the property, while elements of Belgian craftsmanship and design would bring another layer to its identity.

It was, in many ways, a meeting of two homes.

THE ART OF CONTRAST

The beauty of the Masseria lies in its restraint.

Its walls, fashioned from warm pietra leccese, have been carefully polished. Historic vaulted corridors and heritage ceiling paintings have been restored rather than disguised. Travertine floors carry a quiet matte finish beneath the light.

Then come the unexpected details.

A sculptural oak piece by Casimir greets guests in the entrance. In the silent room, a long oak dining table is surrounded by substantial yet elegant seats fashioned from tree trunks — another expression of the Belgian design influence.

Nothing feels overly decorated.

The old building is allowed to speak for itself.

Outside, the garden opens onto a swimming pool framed by Tribù furniture, while the kitchen turns the ingredients and traditions of Salento into contemporary dishes.

Even the former wine cellar has been given a new life. It is now a discreet wellness retreat, with sauna, Turkish bath and a vertical massage shower.

The effect is less that of a conventional luxury hotel than of a private country house whose doors happen to open to a fortunate few.

RELAIS MASSERIA GINEVRA

The name Relais Masseria Ginevra was already waiting in the wings.

For Nicola and Elisa, it represents both continuity and renewal — an extension of their experience in hospitality and, at the same time, the beginning of an entirely new chapter.

Their ambition is not to erase what came before.

Quite the opposite.

They have inherited a place with a story, and their role is to add another chapter without disturbing the pages already written.

This is perhaps what makes their arrival so fitting.

Antonio Augusto once made the journey in the opposite direction: leaving Italy as a boy, discovering Belgium and eventually returning to his homeland with the influences of another life.

Now Nicola and Elisa have arrived from L’Aquila to continue that tradition of movement, discovery and reinvention.

Different journey.

Same instinct.

To build something meaningful somewhere that feels right.

THE NEW SALENTO

There is a particular pleasure in staying somewhere that does not feel manufactured.

At Relais Masseria Ginevra, the luxury is in the space between things: the silence of an old stone corridor, the shade of an olive tree, the first glass of wine in the afternoon, the texture of limestone warmed by the sun.

It is a place for long lunches and slow mornings.

For private dinners around an old oak table.

For swimming before breakfast and lingering over dinner long after the last plate has disappeared.

Above all, it is a place that understands that modern luxury does not necessarily mean more.

Sometimes it means less noise, more space, better materials and a stronger sense of place.

THE PERFECT BEGINNING

Nicola and Elisa arrived as guests. They fell in love with the Masseria. Two weeks later, they were its new custodians.

Perhaps that is the simplest way to describe the beginning of Relais Masseria Ginevra.

But there is something more poetic about it.

A Masseria shaped by migration, entrepreneurship, design and the desire to return home has now found its next chapter in the hands of another family who simply came to stay — and ended up deciding to stay for much longer.

Some love affairs begin slowly. This one took only a few nights.

And in Salento, where time has always had its own rhythm, that may have been exactly enough.