Fikus is about welcoming people, it is like a hug you’ve long awaited when going back to your loved ones. It is a typical Apulian, southern Italian, warm house, but with a special international charme. Here you may happen to be spending an hour in the kitchen with Luisa, where she’d ask you to check on the quiche in the oven, while she catches up on her work phone calls. Or you may wave at the sunset while sipping a cocktail and chat about geopolitics with Francesco, or he may as well involve you in one of his start-uppers meetings. You’d be hearing Italian, English or French languages.Jhonny Cash or Lucio Dalla records will be playing. You’ll attend vintage markets and poetry readings. You may choose if to spoil yourself with wellness treatments or maybe go for a run when the sun goes up at dawn. You may dine with a loud and colorful family. But you may as well decide to enjoy the silent of the wind blowing in the trees, and the scent of the Apulian night, while having dinner in the privacy of your patio. Fikus is a bed & breakfast. But it also the expression of two worlds, a family that cannot wait to welcome you and to make you live your Apulian dream.

Luisa and Francesco decided to move back to Apulia, after many years living abroad. She is from Molfetta, and he is from Altamura, but they met in Brussels, and the European capital was the place where their life story as a couple began. They decided to come back and they made a choice: exchanging an international life, a stimulating environment and many professional opportunities, with a dream. And without even imagining it, their road led up to the Itria Valley and to Ceglie Messapica, and their destiny got into the shape of a trullo. The dream then became willing to match their slow life wish with their own working capabilities, wanting to continue to live and work as professionals in a fast and modern world, but with a greater expectation: to be able to wake up in the morning and be connected online from under an olive tree; to breathe in their own land, far too often rejected, but that they cannot do but love.

We fell in love with Ceglie Messapica the first time we locked eyes on its Castle. When we had our first dinner in one of the many many restaurants that make it the place to be if you want to taste the amazin apulian cuisine: Ceglie Messapica is the capital of the mediterranean cuisine and it is amazingly represented by its local restaurant and shops. The rest ? It is magic white Apulia all around.