We are pleased to have you here…

Dear Traveller

With these few words I would like to welcome you to this land of sea, to this realm of diverse beauties based on light and water. And to give you a few quick instructions for the use of the eye and the ear.

They will probably have told you that, in this landscape, at a particular moment in its history, man conceived certain monuments to white that we use to call here “Masserie”, daughters of a peasant culture of which we are proud. Profiles of a continuous humanism of narrative stones, between lakes, forests and the sea.

Rural architectures that embrace a vast territory that goes from Vico del Gargano countryside to the coasts of San Menaio and Pienta Marzini to the dense, cool, monumental beech woods of the Umbra Forest, today a UNESCO heritage site.

You will feel a sort of pleasant bewilderment if you leave to discover them. The same feeling that will keep your attention alive if you choose to lose yourself in one of the surprising villages of the Monti Dauni. A backdrop of extraordinary houses, narrow and high like coastal towers, or single-storey, with or without roof tiles, with domed roofs covered in plaster and the wave-shaped vaulted edges intended to channel the rain into the cisterns.

Whitewashed and lime-coloured houses, or in the pinkish-grey colour of ancient walls. Whites and blues slightly recalling the near Greece.

Further out there

Not only farmhouses and historic centres. You will immediately caress with your eyes the deep sea, its sea grottoes, the heritage of a marine culture, whose anthropological synthesis is in the extraordinary fishing trebuchets, ancient and rudimentary fishing tools, today preserved as symbol and cultural “beacon” of this Gargano. You will hear the sound of certain rocks, the lights of its caverns, of certain islands that keep each other company. Elements that come together to tell you stories and memories in which man has also played his part.

How much spirituality you will grasp in certain places of the soul, in this land kissed by the sacred, that of the Saint of Pietralcina who was intimately linked to it. Allow yourself to feel a profound religious sense from certain architectural beauties such as the hermitages of Mount Pulsano or the convent of San Marco in Lamis, not far from Monte Sant’Angelo, another UNESCO site in this landscape. Here, in this evocative corner of the Gargano, where an important testimony of faith pours forth, you will come across the sanctuary of San Michele Arcangelo, a pilgrimage destination for over fifteen centuries and still a place of worship and prayer.

On the summit of Monte Sant’Angelo, 800 metres above sea level, almost suspended between heaven and earth, with a view of the Gulf of Manfredonia, stands this sacred rocky complex that conceals its magnificence in the underground parts. It will take your breath away.

Listen traveller

Listen: this is the realm of the sea, of the stones and of the narrating lakes.

This Gargano is testimony to the vestiges of an unwritten culture, engraved in the tuff, in the frescoed niches of the crypts, in the basement “trappeti” (olive oil mills), in the coastal towers, among the fishing trebuchets, in the sea.

But more than historical documents, you need your traveller’s eye to capture and break the silence, you need a flash to pierce the night of times, to search the dark corners of History. You need your eye in the sky to discover the essence of things in the magical light of this land of sea.

More than a good stay – as Mario Cartaro and Cola Antonio Stigliola wrote in “Capitanata” as early as the end of the 16th century – in our Gargano I wish you “an endless journey, constantly changing, made of water and dust, sun and clouds.

A long search that began with the wheat still green, the black earth and the deserted roads and ended with the golden fields, the ferulae in bloom and the open beach umbrellas on the sands”.

Experiences are not all the same, which is why we take it upon ourselves to try out all the tours in person and recommend only those that represent us and of which we are certain.

From adventures by boat to those in the forest, passing through small villages to the discovery of the best restaurants in the area, chosen with care and tried personally by us in our moments of rest.

So it is that the desire for a romantic trip to the Tremiti Islands, the search for a pastry shop and a gift for an anniversary or the search for a special itinerary all come true.

At Cala Molinella we not only select the best of our region and recommend it to you, but we also commit each of our guests to our colleagues who provide excursions and services.

We do this because we like having you with us, but we love even more to help you discover what’s out there. We guide you with kindness and politeness, just as we guide and cuddle a friend who is visiting us for the first time.

If you want to make me happy, don’t risk it, just ask for my advice or a simple coffee.

Antonella