Nardò – Villa with a Large Garden in a Strategic Location

Description

Between the Baroque charm of Nardò and the pine forests of Porto Selvaggio, in that stretch of countryside where the red earth begins to give way to sand and the air already carries the scent of Mediterranean scrub, a villa surrounded by greenery sits on a 1,600 sqm plot in one of Salento’s most sought-after settings: close enough to the town to feel part of it, yet close enough to the coast to breathe in its atmosphere. Beyond the gate, a pale gravel driveway winds through Aleppo pines, cypresses and olive trees, past myrtle hedges and oleander bushes, before opening onto the entrance courtyard, where a curved colonnade frames the veranda and introduces the house with the understated elegance of a grand Mediterranean country residence.

The interior immediately reveals what the façade only hints at. The living room rises to a height of five metres beneath a bell-shaped vaulted ceiling; in the sitting room and master bedroom, star vaults unfold their ribs like stone corollas, an accomplished architectural feature that in Salento has traditionally belonged to residences of distinction and is preserved here in all its original beauty. The thickness of the walls creates niches, deep-set thresholds and passageways that seem carved rather than built. Terrazzo floors reflect the long afternoon light, tall wooden doors align in perspective from one room to the next, and every space conveys that sense of solidity, generosity and comfort that contemporary architecture has largely forgotten.

The villa’s approximately 240 sqm are arranged over three levels. The ground floor is organised around the entrance hall and living room, which opens onto the colonnaded veranda and from there onto the garden: the eat-in kitchen with its open fireplace — the domestic heart of the house, where fire remains part of everyday life rather than mere decoration — the bedrooms, two bathrooms with distinct personalities, one with a bathtub beneath the window overlooking the pines, the other with a shower, and service spaces created within the thickness of the walls. An internal staircase leads to the upper level, with an additional bedroom and direct access to the large roof terrace: an open expanse above the treetops and beneath the sky, which in the warmer months naturally becomes the most beautiful room in the house.

The lower level contains perhaps the property’s most intelligent feature. Conceived as a world of its own, it includes a living room, a kitchen with fireplace, a bedroom and a bathroom with shower lit by a skylight, and connects to a service courtyard with an outdoor kitchenette and independent access: a complete, self-contained unit that allows guests to be accommodated without sacrificing privacy and that, subject to the necessary formalities, lends itself to separate and profitable use.

It is this dual nature that makes the villa so rare. Those who envision it as a home will find a generously proportioned family residence, with a mature garden, three levels suited to different ways of living under the same roof, and the freedom to decide each morning whether to head towards the town or the sea. Those considering it as an investment will recognise the strength of its location — the area between Nardò and the Ionian coast is among the most sought-after in Salento — together with the possibility of using the independent lower level, or the entire property, for hospitality purposes, in a market where demand has for years exceeded the available supply. The two, after all, are not mutually exclusive: they are simply two ways of recognising the same value.