Palazzo Pesce is a fascinating example of a typical eighteenth-century urban mansion of Puglia. Located in Mola di Bari, an Angevin village overlooking the Adriatic sea. The ancient street “Francigena” connects Bari in the north and the province of the Salento in the south. The residence is only twenty minutes from Bari airport and one hour from Brindisi airport.
The house dates back to the XVIII century, when it was permitted to build outside the fortified walls of the court of the Angevin Castle.

The buildings where notables of Mola lived in are similar to the ones in Capua and Naples.

The works of the architect Vincenzo Ruffo from Cassano are particularly present all through town. He designed the plan of Saint Chiara chruch  and renovated the port. Pupil of Carl Galliums, also know as “Bibiena”, Vincenzo Ruffo conducted works for the realization of the Royal Palace of Caserta and, in all probability, also Palazzo Pesce.

The first owner was the noble Roberti family, who sold the house to the Martinelli family in 1777, in order to move in the well-known “Palazzo delle cento camere” (the palace with one hundred rooms) just adjacent to Piazza XX September. In 1810, Palazzo Pesce was already owned by the Pesce family, another noble family. The credit for the elegance of the rooms and the elitist taste of the frescoes, as well as the beauty of the gardens – a cool oasis framed by white tufa and calcareous ashlars –  belong to the Pesce family.  The mirrors and the nineteenth-century decorations of the inner spaces of the house are illuminated by the huge internal garden where plants, exotic flowers and medlars and citruses unite. A house where the sophisticated elegance of cultured nobility and the love for nature and land bring together urbanity and rural stillness.