Our Story

Villa Tre Piantelle has ancient roots.
The trulli were an outbuilding of a peasant dwelling and served as a shelter from the sun and the weather when working the land, but also as a storehouse for grain, olive oil and wine, whose must, after the grapes had been pressed, was collected for maturation in one of the internal cisterns dug into the rock of the floor.
Later it became a dwelling when the family grew and space was needed to accommodate new couples.

Why 'Tre Piantelle"?
In the vast countryside of Martina, people used to name crossroads after the most obvious features of the various points of the countryside.
At a certain point in history, someone planted three saplings in the middle of an open, treeless countryside with few houses, low vineyards and wheat fields. As they grew, these three saplings became like a beacon, a signal to find one's way home, and the neighbourhood began to be called Tre Piantelle.

Modernity forced peasants to leave the land and flock to the cities in search of new jobs. This abandonment gave an unwelcome guest the space to occupy these ancient stone buildings: entropy, which for a few years did its work stripping the trulli of their beauty.
Some owners, taking their cue from modern houses, thought they could remove the aura of poverty that hovered over the trulli's cones by covering the stone domes with white lime and plastering the trulli's interior walls, covering all their beauty of arches, living stone and niches.

Our Story

In bringing the trulli back to life, we wanted to remove the limestone mask that made them up and they began to breathe and smile at anyone who entered their graces. Now inside them the living stone speaks of grandmothers baking bread and grandfathers dipping it in wine; we hear the hubbub around the fireplace when food was prepared, which we have moved outside with a gas grill. We have fused modernity with antiquity by equipping the house with domestic fixtures for a comfortable stay.
Stone has always been a symbol of continuity, stability, permanence and therefore of ancient values. And values are what we seek when we are fed up with the rush and are inexorably pressed by time. We wanted to remember the past and enhance the place by naming the trulli Villa Tre Piantelle. Thus we were able to stop time, but only for our guests, after the gate has closed behind them in a welcoming embrace.