Puglia, Italy

Masseria Auraterrae

Price per night from$398.86

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR343.57), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Masseria Auraterrae Photos

Style

Elevated country estate

Setting

Heel-top hamlet

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Strutting its stuff right at the top of Italy’s heel, boutique hotel Masseria Auraterrae is an intimate Puglian pad of 22 rooms set on an estate of verdant groves and gardens. Its elevated position — a rarity in Puglia — promises balmy citrus-scented breezes and Adriatic views as dazzling as the masseria’s porcelain-hued exteriors. Take it all in from the sea-facing infinity pool, or retreat to a quiet spot — say, the restaurant terrace — for some deliciously analogue downtime.

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A glass of Auraterrae wine each and a selection of snacks at Panoramic Bar Terrace

Facilities

Photos Masseria Auraterrae facilities

Need to know

Rooms

22, including two suites, spread across a converted farmhouse and several of its outbuildings.

Check–Out

11am, but flexible, subject to availability. Check-in is at 3pm. You’re welcome to store luggage and make use of the estate's facilities until your room is ready.

More details

Rates include breakfast served in the Auraterrae Restaurant. Expect fresh Italian breads and cheeses, plus eggs, bacon, fruits, local jams and more.

Also

There are two accessible Belvedere rooms with step-free access and space for wheelchairs. There’s also dedicated parking for wheelchair users and the panoramic infinity pool is accessible, too. Note, however, that the masseria's age and the estate’s varied terrain mean some other areas may prove challenging for guests with impaired mobility.

Hotel closed

Masseria Auraterrae opens seasonally from the beginning of April until the end of December each year.

At the hotel

Free WiFi throughout. In rooms: air-conditioning, smart TV, tea- and coffee-making kit, minibar, free bottled water, bathrobes, slippers and signature bath products.

Our favourite rooms

The tiny number of rooms and substantial expanse of green space at Masseria Auraterrae mean it’s rarely tricky to find a private spot all to yourself here. But, for total, blissful seclusion, the smart money’s on Mare Pool Garden rooms. In addition to all the regular rustic touches — exposed stone, whitewashed walls and original vaulted ceilings — these ones also comes with a private garden and alfresco hydromassage plunge pool; ideal for those who take their sundowner settings seriously.

Poolside

Ancient olive trees and honey-hued stone walls provide an evocative backdrop to the panoramic saltwater infinity pool, but it’s the outlook — to Polignano a Mare and the Adriatic beyond — that really steals the show. Cleanliness is next to godliness in the (separate) hydromassage pool, with its heavenly views of the nearby Abbey of San Vito Martire.

Spa

Masseria Auraterrae has one treatment room, where a range of traditional massages and holistic rituals can be arranged on request. Set amid cacti and olive trees, the garden’s barrel sauna promises further opportunities for indulgence, with countryside and sea views as rejuvenating as the soaring temperature inside.

Packing tips

Avoid coming unstuck (sbloccato) when attempting to order a charcuterie board (tagliere di salumi) with your lunchtime glass of Primitivo — English isn’t always spoken in rural Puglia, so an Italian phrasebook or translation app will prove useful.

Also

Masseria Auraterrae’s private beach club lies on golden sands a 20-minute drive from the estate (beach club fees apply). There’s an outdoor sea-view gym and garden yoga sessions and alfresco Pilates classes dot the calendar in summer.

Pet‐friendly

Dogs are welcome in all rooms and suites. There’s a nightly fee of €35, plus an extra charge for pooches who tip the scales above 10kg. See more pet-friendly hotels in Puglia.

Children

Welcome. There are no special facilities or menus for Little Smiths, but kids are allowed in the pools under adult supervision. Babysitting can be requested 48 hours in advance from €30 an hour for each child.

Sustainability efforts

Masseria Auraterrae’s 24 elevated acres encompass citrus and olive groves, vineyards, orchards and kitchen gardens. So you can be sure that plenty of the ingredients in the bar and restaurant — oils, ripe tomatoes and aubergines, aromatic herbs — are freshly picked from the grounds, supplemented with supplies from local Puglian producers. Rain and wastewater is recycled to irrigate the estate, and solar panels provide much of the masseria’s energy.

Food and Drink

Photos Masseria Auraterrae food and drink

Top Table

The closer you can seat yourself to the edge of the terrace, the better those blockbuster Adriatic views will get. But for a cosier, more intimate setting, candlelit nooks beneath the interior’s stone arches are hard to top.

Dress Code

The masseria is suitably laidback, but we’d recommend leaning into floaty cotton prints and cool white linens during Puglia’s often very hot summers.

Hotel restaurant

Soaring stone arches, cartapesta chandeliers and cathedral-like windows that frame Adriatic and garden views set the scene at Auraterrae Restaurant, set inside a former monks’ refectory. The menu blends age-old Puglian traditions with modern Mediterranean innovation; dishes showcase the estate’s homegrown produce, oils and wines. Fish and seafood reign supreme in these coastal parts: pair the signature tubettoni mussel pasta or seared sea bass with focaccia fresh from the wood oven and a citrussy Auraterrae IGP Bianco Puglia for the win.  

Hotel bar

Installed in an armchair beneath the bar’s vaulted ceiling, warmed by the fireplace in cooler months, you could easily lose an hour or two, leafing through a slim volume of Italian poetry, borrowed from the resident library, as you savour your signature Masseria Spritz (citrus Aperol, orange juice, angostura bitters, prosecco and estate herbs). Browse the bar’s selection of vinyl records to choose the soundtrack to your evening, or amble out to the sea-view terrace for some of the estate’s dreamiest panoramas.

Last orders

Breakfast is served between 7.30am and 10.30am; for lunch, it’s 12.30pm until 2pm, and dinner hours are 7.30pm until 10pm. The bar pours until midnight.

Room service

Available around the clock.

Location

Photos Masseria Auraterrae location
Address
Masseria Auraterrae
Strada Comunale Maringelli snc
Polignano a Mare
70044
Italy

Masseria Auraterrae sits in an elevated position amid olive groves and vineyards at the top of Italy’s heel, a short drive inland from the coastal town of Polignano a Mare.

Planes

Airports at Bari and Brindisi are both around 45–60 minutes along the coast from Masseria Auraterrae; Bari to the north, Brindisi to the south. Private transfers are available on request, from €120 each way.

Trains

Polignano a Mare train station is six kilometres from the hotel and connects to both Bari and Brindisi. Rail journeys along the Puglian coastline are slow but scenic, taking around an hour and 40 minutes from either airport.

Automobiles

Puglia’s rocky coastal bluffs, flat arid landscapes and baroque inland villages seem tailor-made for exploring on four wheels. Cars are available to rent at the airport and there’s free parking with electric-vehicle-charging points at the masseria. The hotel suggests ignoring GPS directions beyond the SP121 Polignano/Conversano exit from the SS16 highway and instead following ‘Auraterrae’ road signs straight to the entrance gates.

Worth getting out of bed for

There’s really no need to do anything in a rush at Masseria Auraterrae, where slow living, mindful analogue activities and gentle country pursuits are in the estate’s DNA. To this end, the masseria’s 24 acres provide more than enough entertainments to fill your days. Start as you mean to go on by sampling highlights of the estate’s epic bounty — aperitifs in the vineyard, sourced from the soil you’re standing on; oil-tasting beneath ancient, gnarled olive trees, and foraging for wild asparagus in the herb garden. 

Take it up a notch for a cooking masterclass with the masseria’s resident chef. Or, get hands on with a ceramics workshop led by artisans from the Puglian ceramics-producing town of Grottaglie. 

Beyond the estate, take a boat tour of Puglia’s rugged, cove-dotted coastline; e-bike your way through vineyards and olive groves to the historic towns of Conversano and Polignano a Mare; or resume that seductively slow pace at Auraterrae’s private beach club.

Local restaurants

As befits a fishing village with a pedigree that goes back to Ancient Greek times and beyond, Polignano e Mare has more than its fair share of fine seafood restaurants. Cove and Terrazze Monachile lead the pack thanks to just-landed crudo and carpaccio platters paired with panoramic Adriatic views.

Local bars

Polignano e Mare is also where it’s at if you’re in the market for somewhere to sip and sup beyond the vineyards. Lime’s terrace is as good a spot for sundowners as any, with a gin and cocktail list so long you’ll work up a thirst just reading it. A short stumble south from here along extraordinary narrow coastal lanes takes you to La Bella Vista in the Centro Storico, another casual sea-view cocktail joint that more than lives up to its name.

Reviews

Photos Masseria Auraterrae reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

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 historic 24-acre country estate and unpacked their stash of virgin olive oils and one-off wines a full account of their slow-living sojourn will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Masseria Auraterrae in Puglia… 

The renovation of Masseria Auraterrae’s centuries-old hilltop farmhouse and outbuildings — dairy, stables, wine press — marries ancient local artisanal traditions with the trappings of 21st-century Puglian living. The old water tank is reborn as a heated saltwater infinity pool and the dovecote’s transformation to luxury suite with a panoramic terrace and Turkish bath is something worth cooing about. Beneath the restaurant’s grand vaulted ceiling, cartapesta (papier-mâché) chandeliers hark back to Baroque-period crafting techniques from nearby Lecce, and the menu — all tuna tartare, seared scallops and blueberry taglioni with porcini mushrooms — has a distinctly modern Mediterranean outlook. Rising high over the Adriatic coastline, the estate’s 24 acres offer many a nook where you can render yourself invisible for an hour or two, from divine walled groves where monks once studied and prayed to an all-new barrel-shaped sauna cloistered among ancient olive trees and towering cacti. Literally and figuratively, it's quite the elevated experience. 

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Price per night from $391.89

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