If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR404.55), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
The d’Amore family could not have a more fitting name as the custodians of Castello di Ugento, their ancestral seat for centuries, with a history preceding them by several more. There are few labours of love greater than dedicating a wing to a museum of your forebears, who were praised for their ‘antique and illustrious nobility’, set out all around you in ravishingly restored frescoes. But, the present generation are investing in more cultural currency, establishing a modern-art gallery, tutoring future chef-superstars in a renowned culinary school, and hosting guests in stylishly anachronistic rooms with mod-statement pieces set against 17th-century stone – we love.
11am, but flexible, subject to availability and a charge. Earliest check-in, 3pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £381.09 (€445), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €2.00 per person per night on check-out.
More details
Rates include a buffet breakfast (à la carte dishes available for an extra charge), and a welcome drink on arrival. A two-night minimum stay applies.
Also
One room is specially adapted for guests with mobility issues and public spaces are accessible (the museum has a lift).
Hotel closed
The property opens annually from April to November.
At the hotel
Museum, art gallery, cooking school, walled kitchen-garden, concierge, charged laundry service, and free WiFi. In rooms: TV, minibar, coffee-maker, tea-making kit, yoga mat, bathrobes and slippers, air-conditioning, and olive-oil-based bath products.
Our favourite rooms
If you can’t justify going full d’Amore family and hiring out all eight rooms of the castle (although feeling like the scion of an ancient dynasty – even for a little bit – will do wonders for your ego), then choose one of the rooms replete with original features. All have the 17th-century stone walls, Corte del Giardino has a pietra Leccese star-vaulted ceiling, and Master Suite Alcova di Diana has soaring vaulted ceilings and a bedroom with a lofty alcove. Each room has a smattering of mod furnishings, too, from Cassina, Poltrona Frau, Minotti, Ceccotti and B&B Italia, that are teamed with vintage finds and handcrafted walnut-wood armoires.
Spa
The hotel has one treatment room for massages. And guests are welcome to use the swimming pool, Jacuzzi and gym at nearby property Masseria le Mandorle (staff can arrange free transfers).
Packing tips
Staying among the trappings of a dizzyingly wealthy Italian clan may have you sending off swabs to 23andMe in search of similar ancestry – but in lieu of inheriting a pile, you could bring a pad to sketch out your own coat of arms – inspired by the d’Amore’s bird-and-sun-depicting version. Otherwise, save space for taking home future heirlooms of local crafts.
Also
Still at the heart of Salento’s community, the hotel hosts guest speakers, artisans, chefs and more.
Children
Famiglia is the bedrock of Castello di Ugento, so little ones are welcomed here (although older children might get more out of the stay). Babysitting can be arranged for €20 an hour, and some rooms interconnect.
Sustainability efforts
Respect has been duly paid to the owner’s ancestors here with painstaking restoration work in retouching frescoes and conserving stonework and replanting the gardens. The latter has been so successful, that there are hundreds of plants and trees to supply the kitchen now. The hotel also uses solar and geothermal power, bottles their own filtered water, uses local products and suppliers wherever possible, and maintains strong ties to the local community.
Take your aperitivi in the jasmine-scented walled garden, watching as the golden-hour light plays across the Leccese stonework.
Dress Code
Fresco prince of Salento fair.
Hotel restaurant
Il Tempo Nuovo (‘new time’) restaurant certainly ticks all the right boxes when it comes to elegant Pugliese dining. The chef has a rich and varied larder in the walled kitchen-garden, where around 100 herbs and edible plants grow and trees bearing almonds, apricots, persimmons, prunes, figs, citrus and more keep on giving. Expect day-boat fish, rare-cooked lamb tossed in herbs, and pastries sweetened with almonds and carob – plus excellent pastas, of course. The core of the tower you’ll dine in may be Norman, but glazed walkways and floors give it an update, and the 18th-century open kitchen is now a bustling hive of stainless-steel tech, where the hotel’s rep for culinary schooling and invention winds the clock further forward still.
Hotel bar
The hotel has a lounge, but you can amble over to the courtyard or garden with your wine. There are cocktails too (don’t worry, your aperitivo negroni will happen), but with varietals such as primitivo, negroamaro and Aglianico, you’ll most definitely be popping a cork at some point. Get to grapes with various kinds of Pugliese wines in the 16th-century cistern turned cellar, where tastings are held.
Castello di Ugento has weathered millennia in Ugento comune’s streets paved with pallid, sunlight-reflecting Lecce stone – having housed many generations of the d’Amore family. At the tip of Italy’s heel, it’s close to the coast, too.
Planes
The closest airport is Brindisi, just over an hour’s drive away, which has direct links across Europe (transfers from here are €120 one-way). Bari has a wider spread of flight routes, but is a slightly longer two-and-a-half-hour drive (transfers one-way are €240).
Trains
Italy’s cities are well connected by train, and the ride from Bari or Brindisi along the coast to Lecce is scenic as can be. Once you’ve arrived, the station is a 50-minute drive from the Castello, and staff can pick you up for €90 one-way. With a few changes you can also connect to Italy’s star-turn stops (Rome, Florence…).
Automobiles
The Baroque cities dotting the heel have a wide margin of green between them, so a car will come in handy for exploring; hotel staff can arrange a hire car or scooter, or secure a chauffeur. There’s a valet service or public parking spots in front of the hotel.
Other
Helicopter and private-jet enthusiasts can charter a landing at a nearby local airport.
Worth getting out of bed for
All the dominion-seeking groups who invaded, razed, rebuilt and ruled the small, sleepy town of Ugento and wider Salento region have left a memento or two behind (Messapian dolmens, Roman amphitheatres, Angevin castles…). But, Castello di Ugento – first built in Roman times, and whose oldest tower dates back to the Normans – has by and large survived it all, and thrived during the 17th century when Don Pietro Giacomo d’Amore bought the whole town and moved in. Centuries later, the d’Amore family are still careful custodians, so much so that one wing of the Castello is now a museum of their past, where you’ll see spectacularly restored frescoes rich in family lore and Grecian mythology, and learn about the Marquis of Ugento and ancestors who established libraries, received private oratories with the pope, or medals of valour and a knighthood during the Second World War. And, as forward-thinking custodians of the castle, the owners have made the first-floor apartments in this wing an exhibition space for contemporary art. And, you don’t make a dynasty without cracking a few eggs, then mixing with flour and rolling out some pasta – centuries of culinary excellence come to a head at the world-class Culinary Centre in the former storehouses. Here you can simply learn how to make a four-course meal using pickings from the kitchen garden (or the iintensive 15-week programme if you come over all Masterchef). Alternatively, take your taste buds on the road for tastings at centuries-old olive-oil mills and wineries; if you’ve arrived in late summer, you can help out with the harvest too. Go fishing with the locals in traditional gozzi; or spend a day grotto-hopping on a self-helmed or skippered vintage sailboat. The ‘basso Salento’ gives you easy access to the golden beaches and turquoise waters of the Ionian, and the dramatic cliffs, watchtowers and nature reserves of the Adriatic, so you’re set for snorkelling, diving, kitesurfing and kayaking (the hotel can arrange instructors). Or explore on land by foot, bike, horseback or classic car, zipping past the famous trulli or trekking through the Regional National Park of Otranto. And see the region’s crafty side, with visits to the studios and ateliers of sculptors, ceramicists, textile-makers, stone-masons and metal-workers.
Local restaurants
Castello di Ugento is home to a very highly regarded culinary school, and in various ways it’s been top-dog round these parts for a while, so unsurprisingly, it has one of Ugento’s best eateries. But, there are other feted darlings in the surroundings, say L’Acchiatura (a 15-minute drive away on 12 Via Marzani). In its stone-vaulted setting, dishes are solidly simple and tasty: tagliatelle tossed with anchovies or cuttlefish, mussels carbonara, pepper-crusted tuna… In Ruffano’s main piazza, there’s Farmacia dei Sani, with avant-garde platings for the likes of spaghetti con la colatura di alici (spaghetti with fish sauce, pistachio and lemon), and white chocolate and capers for dessert. They also make their own spirits and the gin goes down very easy.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this regal hotel that’s a Puglian family saga writ in stone and road-tested their new Italian cookery skills, a full account of their dynastic-fantastic break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Castello di Ugento in Puglia…
It’s quite the flex to have a family line so monumental that you can dedicate a museum to it. But owners and caretakers of grand Puglian hideaway Castello di Ugento, the d’Amore family, have earnt the recognition. They were mentioned as far back as 1288 in the Cronaca Antianorum (a Who’s Who list of very important families) and patriarch Don Pietro Giacomo d’Amore bought up the whole town of Ugento in the 17th century. Other notable relatives have been Maltese knights, granted private audiences with the Pope, writers who established libraries, and decorated soldiers in the Second World War. It’s the sort of saga Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa would get in a cannoli-twist over… And you'll learn all about it while you’re here, as well as seeing the vivid, restored murals – referencing daily lore and Greek mythology – that canter richly across ceilings (some suites have them too). But, you won’t be living in the past; the latest in the line have established a modern-art space and run a highly regarded cookery school here. Guest rooms may be built of 17th-century stone, but they’re furnished with sleek pieces from Ceccotti, B&B Italia, and more; and the restaurant looks firmly ahead in pushing Pugliese tradition – all ensuring this family’s continued good fortune (and yours too, till check-out).
