Founder of Susafa
My name is Manfredi and I am the second born of four children. Giulia is the oldest, Tommaso and Sara the youngest, and we are descendants of Gioacchino Saeli, the fifth generation of Saelis.
After our great great grandfather Gioacchino, the great grandfather Manfredo and grandpa Gino, with their respective wives, all decided to move back here eventually, my mother Maria Grazia and my father Mario decided to do the same, to go back to their origins. Us kids, we were still very young and, after I finished my studies, I had an obvious thirst for adventure, and the need to explore the world. I moved to Canada, where I met my wife, then we moved to Belgium and it was right there, while living in a less contaminated reality than the city one we were used to, that I re-evaluated our past and the opportunity for inner growth, which could be achieved only by managing a place as magical as Susafa.
I’ve always thought that you need to be free to leave in order to be able to come back. My brothers and I, grew up with my mother’s stories of the Masseria; she managed to pass on to us a sense of belonging, one that can be understood only by those who had left their life here, in such a unique and uncontaminated place, where time seems still, or at least slowed down by emotions, although perhaps, to understand it, you need to miss it in the first place.
Susafa, when me and by brothers started managing it, making ecological, natural and environment-friendly choices, was the result of adding up what four generations had done, and us, as the fifth one, we can finally feel proud to have been able to revive those traditions, taking a step back into our history.
Check out some images of Manfredi’s boutique hotel
