Casa Soleto is a 17th-century home restored with reverence and restraint by Andrew Trotter and Marcelo Martínez. A beautifully designed home 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.
For most, Puglia conjures images of orecchiette piled high into hand-painted (and often charmingly chipped) ceramic bowls, crumbling kitchens helmed by nonnas, and hidden coves with fishbowl-clear water. For others, it brings the understated yet evocative designs of Andrew Trotter to mind. Alongside his team, Andrew has carved a niche in creating spaces that feel timeless and rooted in their context. His work, particularly in Puglia, is anchored by a deep respect for tradition while offering a fresh, modern perspective on rural living.
Drawing inspiration from the region’s vernacular architecture, Studio Andrew Trotter is known for restoring historic buildings or crafting new structures that assimilate with the landscape, often using local materials such as lime plaster and sandstone. The commonality that exists in all of their projects is a commitment to context and tradition while making space for modern comforts creating a pared-back, seemingly undesigned feel.
After many years of designing projects for clients in the region (perhaps most famously Masseria Moroseta), Andrew teamed up with Marcelo Martínez to purchase a 400-year-old house in a sleepy town 20 minutes south of Lecce. Casa Soleto, as it has been named, is a testament to the studio’s approach and a certain kind of lifestyle, one that embraces the slow village life of the Puglian countryside without sacrificing design or comfort.
Casa Soleto looks — and feels — almost exactly like the charmingly decrepit building Andrew and Marcelo stumbled upon all those years ago, which is precisely the point. The bones of the building have been reinforced to stand the test of time, and the space that served as one Pugliese family’s home for generations has been redesigned through Andrew Trotter’s unmistakable lens.
