After twenty-eight years in Asia, Maria Pia Ancora and Mario Dimitri came home to turn their town into Italy's first longevity retreat inside a living historic centre.
15Dolcevita is a private longevity retreat and members club taking shape inside ten historic buildings in the old town of Manduria, a 2,700-year-old town in Salento. It is an albergo diffuso: real rooms you book and stay in, a wellness atelier where the science of longevity works in silence, a listening bar, a kitchen of Salentine grandmothers, and a gymnásion, twenty-five centuries after the Greeks of these shores built the first ones. The first three suites open at Christmas 2026. The first fifty members become Founding Members.
Behind it is Manduriashire Srl, founded by Maria Pia Ancora (PhD Tsinghua, Principal Urban Development Specialist at the Asian Development Bank) and Mario Dimitri (Bocconi, CEIBS MBA, 17 years building businesses in Greater China), who came home to build something that lasts.
“We did not invent it: this land never forgot it.”
Maria Pia Ancora and Mario Dimitri, on the gymnásion principle: one place for the body that trains, the mind that is nourished, the community that forms.
Credit: courtesy 15Dolcevita · Manduriashire Srl. Professional photography of the uncovered star vaults is coming: write to us for previews and high-resolution files.
The site is under restoration now: we host one journalist or creator each month for a private hard-hat visit among the star vaults. Maria Pia and Mario are available for interviews and podcasts, in English and Italian.
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