Soleto is a special town, nestled into the heart of the Salento area in Puglia, Italy. Only a few minutes away from the historic Baroque town of Lecce, the streets appear to be lost in time, like a set from an Italian movie. The small chapel of Santo Stefano is the centre, built in 1347, and like its larger sister in Galatina, canvassed in frescoes in the style of Gothic and Proto-Renaissance Italian artist Giotto. The Soleto Map discovered here in 2003, depicts the south of Puglia on a piece of terracotta and is thought to be one of the oldest maps in Europe, if not the world. This indescribable world is the setting for Casa Soleto, an adaptive reuse project that reinstates a 400-year-old home to its former glory while simultaneously being fitted with 21st-century amenities to create a holiday home that has its own unique identity.

Casa Soleto offers one to experience the quintessential Italian village life, in a home with the unparalleled character one would expect of a house from the seventeenth century. It’s no wonder then that architect Andrew Trotter was drawn to it. He describes house-hunting online as one of his favourite pastimes, even so far as calling it an addiction. In September 2020, he stumbled onto this house, sized around 220 square meters, with a front patio and a back courtyard garden.  Although it was in a town that he had never heard of before, he visited Soleto and pleaded with the agent multiple times to be allowed in.  As luck would have it, the home’s initial offer fell through and two weeks later, he found himself the owner of this charming villa. A noble palazzotto, the street front had all the baroque details of a small palazzo, and inside it, time stood still. The house hadn’t been lived in for over twenty years and the rooms were full of furniture, books, clothes and old photos of the family. Because of the pandemic, it took Trotter over seven months just to buy the house. And then another five months to start renovation work. Once the cleanup began, they realised there were more problems than initially anticipated.

As parts of the house were over 400 years old, parts of the ceiling needed to be replaced. Most of the lower walls were finished with concrete plaster and had accumulated moisture. The sewage basically was a hole in the back garden, and there was only one bathroom for the whole house. The house was also quite a labyrinth, with the staircase to reach the bedrooms on the upper level placed on the front porch. Accepting the charm of the old home meant accepting its flaws, with not a single straight wall in sight and a rather odd spatial layout by today’s contemporary design standards.

Trotter and his Studio’s co-founder Marcelo Martínez, took this on as their first personal interior design project together. The building renovation, made using various traditional techniques and indigenous materials, carefully preserves the historic features of the home as far as possible. Martinez describes his thoughts when they started saying, “From the beginning, we were clear that the project had to feel cohesive and that the interventions had to relate to the structure and the place.” Rather than completely modernize it, an artful balance of its existing elements and modern conveniences was achieved. The internal atmosphere of the home was to be quaint yet relevant.

The home's entrance is through a courtyard that also doubles as the perfect spot to have breakfast and dinner as it does not receive direct sun. This courtyard extends into the main living room and a fully equipped kitchen. Behind the kitchen, what once was the old chapel has been turned into a media room, with its own powder room and outdoor shower. Connected to the living room is a reflective dining room with another powder room and on the opposite edge is a garden room connected to a plunge pool. Most of the ceilings on the ground floor are vaulted and around five meters high. The upper level consists of three irregular bedroom suites, each with an en-suite.

The house is special because of its distinctive heritage qualities, and these need to be preserved. “When renovating the property, we tried to keep as many original elements and furniture as possible: most of the floors, internal doors, kitchen cabinets and sink. We used lime plasters for the walls, worked with artisans to make new external doors based on the original doors that were in the house, and added traditional bathroom furniture. Thus, the original items were saved wherever possible”, says Martinez. The walls were refinished with handmade plaster which was locally acquired. Smooth to the touch, yet full of texture, the colour palette was chosen in order to make some rooms feel light, while others feel moody. Once the plastering was complete and the floors cleaned, the style of the house could be envisioned. Old-school bathroom fittings, restored internal doors and a recreated main entrance all work in synergy to convince visitors that they were always a part of the house.

A wonderful local artisan Paglia di Lino made linen upholstery and curtains. Fascinating pieces of antique furniture like an XVIII century walnut dining table salvaged from a monastery and an early XIX century red wardrobe from Lombardy have found new homes here.  Most of the artwork was in the house, except for 3 beautiful paintings made specifically for the house by a good friend of the designers, a young artist from Antwerp named Eleanor Herbosh. For the commission, she was sent three bags of soil, all taken from underneath different rooms of the house, which she used to create the pieces. “It has been a great experience and a huge learning curve to work with so many great local artisans—all of them very proud to help restore and bring to life one of the historic houses in the town.”, concludes Trotter. Casa Soleto is a fine example of raw Italian design, unearthed and polished, and as the designers themselves agree, best experienced barefoot.

Project Details

Project Name:Casa Soleto
Architect: Studio Andrew Trotter
Walls: Domingue Finishes, Tullio Cardinale
Fittings: Valadares
Carpentry: Alba Falegnameria
Sanitaryware: Arte Ippolito
Rugs: Armadillo Rugs
Upholstery: Paglia di Lino
Furniture and décor: Frama, Blasco
Antiques: Le Icone, La Mercanteria
Crockery: Giorgia Eugenia Goggi, Nicola Fasano
Cooking range: ILVE
Artwork: Eleanor Herbosh, Lucas Morten