Borgo Egnazia

On 13 June 2024 the leaders of the G7 met at Borgo Egnazia, a resort outside Savelletri di Fasano in Puglia that had opened fourteen years earlier as a newly built village of local tufa stone. Nothing on the site is old except the olive trees and the Roman city of Egnazia next door, yet the piazza, lanes and whitewashed houses were designed to look as if they had always been there.

History

The Melpignano family had already turned a fortified farmhouse nearby into Masseria San Domenico and laid out an 18-hole golf course beside the sea when Marisa Melpignano and her son Aldo began planning a larger resort on the family's land. Borgo Egnazia opened in 2010. Two years later Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel were married there, in October 2012, and the resort became a fixture of the international wedding circuit. Due Camini, the main restaurant, won a Michelin star in 2020, and in 2024 the Italian government chose the resort for the G7 summit, which closed it to other guests for the week.

Architecture and design

The architect Pino Brescia drew the whole village, taking the courtyards, lanes and flat roofs of Puglian towns and building them in tufa, the pale local limestone, with hand-finished plaster, cane ceilings and furniture made by regional craftsmen. The resort divides into three parts. La Corte is the main building around a courtyard, with the reception, the bars and most of the restaurants. Il Borgo is the village proper, a grid of small houses on lanes leading to a piazza. Le Ville are detached villas with gardens and private pools set towards the sea. Olive trees hundreds of years old were kept wherever they stood.

Rooms and suites

Rooms in La Corte are the most conventional, with terraces over the courtyard or the gardens. The houses of the Borgo, called casette, have a sitting room on the ground floor and a bedroom above, with a roof terrace or a small garden. The villas run to several bedrooms each, with their own pools and staff. Interiors throughout are white and stone-coloured, with linen, local ceramics and little decoration beyond the walls themselves.

Dining

Due Camini, led by Domingo Schingaro, holds a Michelin star and cooks Puglian ingredients with precision: vegetables, pulses, the region's burrata and bread, fish from the Adriatic. La Frasca, in the Borgo, serves the traditional dishes of the countryside in a room built like a farmhouse kitchen. Cala Masciola, the beach club a short drive away, has its own restaurant on the water. Several bars and a pizzeria fill the gaps.

Wellness

The Vair spa takes its name from the dialect word for true and builds its programme on Puglian traditions of touch, music and food as much as on treatments. There are indoor and outdoor pools, a hammam and gym, and a staff of therapists trained in the house's own methods. San Domenico Golf, the family's 18-hole links course beside the sea, is a few minutes away, and the beach club at Cala Masciola has sunbeds on the rocks and a sandy cove.

Weddings and events

Borgo Egnazia is one of the largest wedding venues in southern Italy, with the piazza of the Borgo, the courtyard of La Corte, the gardens and the beach club all used for ceremonies and dinners. Meeting rooms and the whole-resort buy-outs that served the G7 are available for conferences and corporate retreats. Capacities depend on the combination of spaces and are confirmed by the resort.

Location

Savelletri di Fasano lies on the Adriatic coast of Puglia between Bari and Brindisi. Brindisi airport is about 45 minutes by car and Bari about an hour; Fasano is the nearest railway station. The archaeological park of Egnazia adjoins the resort, and Alberobello, Ostuni and Polignano a Mare are each within half an hour. As a luxury resort in Puglia, Borgo Egnazia set the template that many later openings in the region have followed.