A bougainvillea-festooned, 16th-century, fortified farmhouse, surrounded by ancient olive trees, provides the bones for Masseria Torre Maizza, in Puglia. It’s a rambling, whitewashed place, situated between the town of Fasano and the Adriatic Sea. While it’s close to various Puglian delights—the trulli of Alberobello, mozzarella-making dairy farms—as well as a nine-hole golf course that snakes around the hotel, it also offers seclusion for those wanting to hunker down and unwind.
And many do. The hotel consistently ranks as a favorite for couples, and once I get to my suite with its private plunge pool, it’s immediately clear why. The history of the hotel might hook you—its watchtower was once used as a lookout against Ottoman and Saracen attackers—but it’s the rooms, created by Rocco Forte’s design director, Olga Polizzi, that reel you in. My room—a villa, really—features the hotel-wide color scheme of white, terra-cotta, and green, with distinctive majolica plates adorning the wall and ceramic lamps from the nearby town of Grottaglie. A family of four could live quite comfortably in the sizable bathroom.
