After twenty-eight years in Asia, Maria Pia Ancora and Mario Dimitri came home to build three suites and a community inside a living historic centre.
15Dolcevita is a small community taking shape inside ten historic buildings in the old town of Manduria, a 2,700-year-old town in Salento. It is an albergo diffuso: real rooms you book and stay in, a wellness atelier built around water, stone and heat, a listening bar, a kitchen of Salentine grandmothers, and a gymnásion, twenty-five centuries after the Greeks of these shores built the first ones. The first three suites open in Summer 2027. The first fifty members become Founding Members.
Behind it is Manduriashire Srl, founded by Mario Dimitri (Bocconi, CEIBS MBA, 17 years building businesses in Greater China) with Maria Pia Ancora (environmental engineer, PhD Tsinghua, twenty-eight years in development finance across Asia) as investor: two manduriani who came home to build something that lasts.
“We did not invent it: this land never forgot it.”
Maria Pia Ancora and Mario Dimitri, on the gymnásion principle: one place for the body that trains, the mind that is nourished, the community that forms.
Credit: courtesy 15Dolcevita · Manduriashire Srl. Professional photography of the uncovered star vaults is coming: write to us for previews and high-resolution files.
The site is under restoration now: we host one journalist or creator each month for a hard-hat visit among the star vaults, one at a time. Mario is available for interviews and podcasts, in English and Italian.
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