Aucoot is proud to present Casa Soleto – a 17th-century home restored with reverence and restraint by Andrew Trotter and Marcelo Martínez. Casa Soleto represents the first time a project by Studio Andrew Trotter offering an opportunity to own both a beautifully designed home and a property that generates a substantial income as a holiday home and shoot location.
Tucked within the historic centre of Soleto – a charming town in Italy’s southernmost region of Puglia – Casa Soleto, with its limewashed walls, vaulted ceilings and salvaged furniture, is a characterful response to its time and place – a home that feels both ancient and intimately contemporary.
Film by Rob Crawford.
Casa Soleto is a hospitality project located near the rural town of Soleto, in Puglia, Italy. Studio Andrew Trotter and Marcelo Martínez have restored a seventeenth-century house, aiming to create an atmosphere defined by the preservation of its historic features and memories, expressed through the curated design of its spaces.
The Story by Andrew Trotter
The house was charming. The street front had all the baroque details of a small palazzo, and inside it was like time stood still. The rooms with high vaulted ceilings were full of furniture, books, clothes and old photos of the family. The house hadn’t been lived in for over 20 years but felt like all it needed was a bit of love and we could move right in. But we were wrong.
Because of the pandemic, it took us over seven months just to buy the house. And then another five months to start work. Once we started to clean up the house, we realised there were more problems than we thought. The ceiling of one of the bedrooms and bathroom needed to be replaced. Most of the lower walls had concrete plaster which held all the damp within the walls. The sewerage basically was a hole in the back garden, and there was only one bathroom for the whole house. We had work to do. The room behind the kitchen would have been a chapel back in the days, so the family didn’t need to leave the house to pray.
Casa Soleto offers a truly authentic experience of “the village life” in the heart of Salento, Puglia.
The noble palazzotto has been lovingly restored by Studio Andrew Trotter and Marcelo Martínez. They took time with the renovation to carefully preserve the historic features of the house, while bringing it into the twenty-first century. From the gate you enter the house through a courtyard, which is the perfect spot to have breakfast and dinner as it has no direct sun. From that courtyard you will find the main living room and a fully equipped kitchen with everything you need to prepare a nice meal.
Behind the kitchen you will discover what once was the old chapel, which has been turned into a media room, with a 4 meter sofa (that can also be turned into two single beds for extra guests). This room has its own powder room and outdoor shower. Connected to the living room you will discover the majestic dining room with another powder room and, on the opposite side, the garden room with a 3 meter sofa, the perfect place to relax and read a book. Outside there is a garden with a 3×2 meter plunge pool, to take the sun or cool off during hot days. The upper floor is reached using the staircase in the entry courtyard.
To the right side of the staircase you enter into the green room, which leads you to the bedroom overlooking the street and the church, with its own en-suite and walk-in wardrobe. On the other side of the green room there is the large master bedroom with a terrace overlooking the garden, and a large bathroom with an old cast iron clawfoot bath.
Photography Salva López
