Places: Critabianca, Southern Italy

Critabianca is a charming 6-room country house hotel in the heart of Salento. Located in the ancient and picturesque countryside of Cutrofiano, in Grecia Salentina*, Critabianca is a welcoming and peaceful oasis. The country house once belonged to Jean Goulart de Sauméry, regent of Castel del Monte during the Angioini period. It then became the summer country residence of well-to-do middle-class families of the Bourbon 1700s, and in the late 1800s it would become a farmhouse devoted to the production of tobacco. Today, Critabianca is a beautiful boutique hotel among the olive trees and prickly pears, where the sunlight reflects off the white glare of lime plastered walls…

* Grecìa Salentina is an area in the peninsula of Salento in southern Italy, near the town of Lecce which is inhabited by the Griko people (Γκρίκο), a Greek community in southern Italy who speak Griko, a variant of Greek.