Planes

Brindisi Airport lies around an hour north of Spongano. Transfers can be arranged, with prices ranging from €80 to €140 one way, depending on the season.

Trains

Spongano station is a 10-minute walk from I Tre Bacili and serves local towns and cities including Lecce and Castiglione.

Automobiles

Spongano is too small a village to rely on for all your shopping and dining needs, so you’ll need your own wheels not only to source supplies but also to explore Puglia’s wild, arid landscapes and rocky coastal bluffs. Cars are available to hire at the airport and there’s secure CCTV-monitored parking at I Tre Bacili for a €17 nightly fee.

Worth Getting Out of Bed For

Take time out of your hectic sunbathing schedule to explore some of the Barocco Leccese architecture that lends Salento’s towns and villages their distinctive character. You’ll find some of the best examples of the style – notable for features such as elaborate porticoes, cornices, balconies and gargoyles – in Lecce and Otranto.

Lecce is the cultural and artistic capital of the region, often referred to as ‘the Florence of the South’ on account of its multitude of baroque monuments, not least the namesake Basilica di Santa Croce. The facade of this eye-popping masterpiece is fairly festooned with pagan beasts, saintly figures and, um, vegetables. It’s enough to make you wonder what the 17th-century sculptors responsible were putting in their morning cuppas.

Over in coastal Otranto, the Romanesque cathedral cuts a far more refined figure, its impressive rose window the standout feature in an otherwise relatively ordinary facade. But don’t be fooled: the trippy 12th-century mosaic that covers the floor inside – all winged gryphons and hirsute centaurs – is outweirded only by the skulls of hundreds of decapitated martyrs stacked high in the chapel ossuary. Stick around though: Otranto also happens to be Italy’s easternmost town, with a pretty port, a castle, some fine fish restaurants and a sandy beach lapped by the turquoise waters of the Adriatic.

Further swimming opportunities abound on both sides of the peninsula. The secluded coves at Castro and Acquaviva are close enough to I Tre Bacili to squeeze in a morning dip before anyone else arrives, and it’s less than an hour’s drive to the long powdery beaches of Gallipoli on the Ionian Coast. Lido Ficò, around 10 minutes from the mansion, promises cocktails direct to your daybed and access to gin-clear waters via a wooden boardwalk across the rocks; entry fees apply.