The history

Our "Masseria" is part of the ancient rural and pastoral enterity called "Citulo" and sited at the foot of the Savignano Mount (mt. 653) and the Caccia Mount (mt. 679); those are the highest points in Apulia if you exclude the Gargano area and the Daunia, only 3 km far from Castel del Monte.

Some archaeological sites of the last decades, especially made in the close area of "S. Magno", highlighted the presence of sepultures dated back to the the historical iron period (b.C. X-VIII centuries). The discovery of some coins and china ensures the rural and pastoral productions around some rural villages even livings in the lateancient era (a.C. III century). In a modern age, the territory, subordinated to the feudal "signoria" Carafa, Andria dukes and Ruvo counts, after the process of privatizazion of the state-owned lands, it became the hold of notables and people of the big agrarian middle class. Those person built here their summer abodes.

The accomodating activity of "Il Pino Grande" is in one of those master abodes that are made with the local hot rock. The building, certainly the most ancient and important of the "Masseria Citulo", showed the presence of an initial body, maybe already enlarged in the 1700 early years, and later they added others structures, till to the big transformation completed in 1859. In the middle 1900 the building was in the centre of a productive village with about 300 workers from March to November, added to the workers that normally bred bovines, sheeps and other animals; they dealt with the tipical coltivations like vines, several arables and almond trees.

The name of the company honours the presance of an enormous pine of the Pinus pinea family, 25 m tall, with a trunk circumference of 4 m. at the base. It is about 300 years old!. It is surrounded by a garden in which there is a majestic example of the "roverella" (Quercus lanuginosa), with other plants of the Mediterranean scrub, of the tipical flora that once covered large areas of Apulia (the local tradiction already know about the federiciano wood that it recently seems be confermed by a document written in 1278).