Ethical restoration · Hospitality · Community
Reimagining Manduria.
We restore the ancient heart of one of Puglia's most authentic towns, in Salento, and build something new inside it.
We restore the ancient heart of one of Puglia's most authentic towns, in Salento, and build something new inside it.
ManduriaShire Srl acquires, restores, and repurposes historic properties in Manduria's centro storico, in Puglia, southern Italy: the ancient Messapian heart of one of Salento's least discovered towns.
Our thesis is simple. These buildings, with their volte a stella ceilings and centuries of stories, deserve better than abandonment. We restore them ethically, we fill them with life, and we offer them to people who see what we see: a place worth belonging to. Every building that finds its family brings the next one into the circle. The town grows back, one house at a time.
Because it is home. We were born here: we are not investors who found a picturesque town on a map, we are manduriani who came back. And because Manduria is alive. A real piazza, a festa in summer, neighbours who stop you in the lane to ask about the works. Many historic centres have emptied into museums or scenography. This one still works as a town, and a town that works cannot be replicated somewhere else.
We listen before we build. A forgotten building is not torn down: it is listened to. The door of number 13 was restored and put back exactly where it has always been, and the patterned cement tiles found under the dust stay where they are.
We build by hand. The two arches of the courtyard took five months, a wooden centring and tufo blocks cut on site, the way this courtyard was built the first time. Local masons, local stone, local pace.
One house at a time. Every house that finds its family funds the restoration of the next one. No shortcuts, no scale for its own sake: the town grows back at the pace of the people who join it.
See how we work, in the restoration diary →Some of our guests fall in love with Manduria and want more than a stay. They want a home.
We help them find it. ManduriaShire identifies, acquires, and restores historic properties in the old town, then offers them to buyers who want to become part of the community. You arrive as a guest of 15Dolcevita. You return as a neighbour. Your home joins the ecosystem: managed by us when you are away, alive with friends when you are here. Every house that finds its owner funds the restoration of the next one. The community builds itself.
One more fact worth knowing. Since April 2026, Manduria falls within Italy's 7% flat tax regime: holders of foreign pensions who transfer their tax residence to a southern town of up to 30,000 inhabitants pay a 7% substitute tax on all foreign income, for nine tax years (art. 24-ter TUIR, as amended by Law 34/2026). Whether it applies to you depends on your situation: ask your tax advisor.
Interested? Write to us. →
A private biohacking retreat for couples, woven through the streets of Manduria. Opening Summer 2027.
Discover 15Dolcevita →Beyond hospitality, ManduriaShire works with local institutions on projects that give back to the town: youth creative centres, entrepreneurship support for young professionals, and cultural programmes that connect Manduria's heritage with its future.
After twenty-eight years in Asia, Maria Pia Ancora and Mario Dimitri came home to turn their town into Italy's first longevity retreat inside a living historic centre.
Environmental engineer, PhD at Tsinghua, Principal at the Asian Development Bank. Six languages. She is finishing saving the world, then she comes home.
Raised in Manduria, Bocconi and CEIBS MBA in Shanghai, 17 years building businesses across Asia. Convinced that joy is the ultimate longevity practice.
What Manduria sounds like to us. Loads only if you press play.