Hotel Masseria Le Pajare

Why it’s on the Edit

Hotel Masseria Le Pajare is a four-star hotel built around three old pajare. A pajara is a Salento farm building with a barrel vault, here with the carparo stone left exposed.

The hotel calls its home a historic residence among centuries-old olive trees and says it was designed as a historic masseria. The three old pajare are the core, and a large fortified tower holds the reception. The newer buildings echo the shapes of the pajare, with local stone floors and outer masonry, so expect a hotel laid out like a masseria rather than a single old farm.

It sits at Casarana, in the countryside of Presicce-Acquarica. The 2021 register of the Regione Puglia lists 29 rooms and 71 beds, open all year at that time.

The rooms

The website describes large double rooms with a veranda in front, furnished with chairs and a small table, facing either the pool or the olive grove. Free parking is inside the grounds.

Family rooms come in two layouts: a double room with a small extra room holding two or three beds, and a double room with two bunk beds. The room pages are named Matrimoniale, Matrimoniale Superior, Family Room Economy, Family Room, Family Room Superior and Bilocale, the last a two-room unit. The pages we read carry no further description, so ask the hotel what separates one from the next.

The register adds what a room contains: air conditioning and heating, a safe, a television, soundproofing, a minibar and a telephone. It does not give room sizes, and neither does the website.

Eating and drinking

The hotel has a restaurant serving typical Salento dishes, and the website says it uses only local ingredients. It does not publish a menu, opening days or the name of a chef.

If dinner matters to your trip, ask whether the restaurant is open on your nights, particularly outside high summer.

The setting

The fortified tower stands at the center and dominates a wide patio. The pool sits in that patio, framed by a green Mediterranean park. The hotel also lists a large garden and a tennis court.

The hotel says the complex was conceived to respect the authenticity of the territory and to blend into it, with local materials from the paving to the outer masonry.

The sea is not at the gate. The website places the hotel a few minutes from the Salento beaches and names Pescoluse, so plan on driving to the coast on beach days and coming back to the pool.

Its own Salento page calls Presicce an excellent base for day trips and lists Pescoluse (which it nicknames the Maldives of Salento), Santa Maria di Leuca, Gallipoli, Otranto, Porto Cesareo with Punta Prosciutto, and Lecce, which it calls the Florence of the South for its Baroque. It gives no distances we could read.

Good to know

• Check-in from 15:00 and check-out by 10:00.
• Pets are allowed, according to the website.
• The website advertises a discount for direct bookings and does not state the amount.
• Parking inside the grounds is free.
• The register listed the hotel as open all year in 2021. Confirm current months with the hotel.
• Not confirmed here: spa, gym, kids club, wedding hire and room sizes.
• Price band: 1 of 5 (estimated: no official rate found).

Who it suits, and who should look elsewhere

Families and groups who drive, want a pool, a garden and a tennis court, and travel with a dog fit best. It is also a quiet countryside base for couples who do not need a seaside town.

If you want a restored farmhouse with centuries of walls, a spa or a full hotel program, search elsewhere. Masseria Ruri Pulcra is a seventeenth-century farmhouse in Patù. Hotel L’Approdo sits above the marina at Leuca.

Getting there

Hotel Masseria Le Pajare is at Casarana, on the provincial road from Presicce to Lido Marini, in Presicce-Acquarica, in the Santa Maria di Leuca and the Cape area. Brindisi is the nearer airport, and Bari is further north.

You need a car. The hotel is in open countryside and the beaches are a drive away, so a rental car from the airport is the practical way to arrive.