We had a fantastic holiday at Villa Cornula. The host Maria and her daughter were very welcoming and helpful. The house itself is great, the description is very accurate and to some extent the images do not give justice to the comfort and space of the house and the garden : it is a proper, cared-for family home rather than a rental property. Everything was as described or better than described - the only suggestions we made for improvement were regarding the wi-fi, which unfortunately was down for the majority of the time, and regarding the TV, which only showed 4 Italian channels (we hardly watch TV whilst on holiday so not a problem for us). A car is a must to explore the region and travel to/from the beach. The town of S.Maria is 3 minutes drive down the hill and offers all that is needed (minus a cash machine - for that you have to drive 10 mins or so. We did a number of day and evening trips to Gallipoli, Porto Cesareo, Lecce, Porto Selvaggio, Nardo' and regularly went to S Caterina and S Maria for dinner and the obligatory ice-cream. We were a party of 6 (me and wife, 2 kids and the grandparents) and there was plenty of space for everyone. The villa has total privacy, the garden has cooking herbs, a pomegranate tree and a couple of yummy fig trees. There are lovely views of the coastline all the way to Gallipoli from the back of the garden. The nearest (small but very pretty) beach is in S Maria, which is 3 mins drive away (walking not advisable with small kids given that the road is very busy with traffic and there is not walking pavement), within 10-15 mins there are a number of fantastic beaches to choose from . Our favorite is the sandy beach in the Lido Conchiglie / Rivabella area but there are plenty more and a lot of rocky beaches (which tend to offer more privacy) to choose from. We have been in this part of Puglia many time before and our favorite times to come are late June / early July and late August / early September. Beaches and town centres do get very busy during August in particular ! Overall we had a fantastic time and we look forward to coming back to Salento and to Villa Cornula at the earliest opportunity ! Thank you Maria for making our stay so enjoyable.