“I am in Italy, working under a hot mid-day sun, in a subterranean world of Byzantine adorned frescos. I am lovingly and painstakingly restoring them to their former glory.”

Canadian artist Jennifer Bell tells me she imagines this would be the opening of her Eat, Pray, Love-style memoir. In 1994 she heard about a volunteer restoration project in Puglia. It sounded like the perfect adventure for a solo traveler—a chance to really immerse herself with the locals, learn a new skill, plus she’d be doing some good by taking part in conserving the artistic heritage of the area.

Jennifer never imagined that the adventure would unfold into a romance. Decades later she’s married to the man who founded the project, Tonio Creanza. Together they’ve grown the organization, running a variety of programs that attract international travelers who come to learn art restoration, culinary and shepherding traditions, or participate in artist residencies, all of which immerse them in the rich culture of this under-touristed area of Puglia.

“Ninety percent of our participants are women,” Jennifer tells me. Time here gives them a chance to connect with the southern Italian culture much more easily than if they were traveling on their own. One- and two-week programs are based in the village of Gravina, where guests are housed in a fifteenth-century palazzo and enjoy mingling with the locals in the piazza or wandering over a stone footbridge to the open countryside.

The program’s founder and director Tonio, along with guest lecturers, expert restorers, and local university students give hands-on instruction at a relaxed pace, and there are no artistic requirements to join in. Participants can spend time restoring frescos in one of the area’s many underground natural caves that were used as private places for worship in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. In the lab adjoining the masseria, students create their own frescos, learning the full process, from making the plaster to crafting natural pigments. Art works from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, found in local homes and churches, are also restored in this lab, where participants focus on intricate tasks with scalpels and Q-tips. They are living with history and becoming a part of it.

Combined with these activities and lectures are field trips where they’re introduced to archaeologists and restorers in Pompeii, the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Matera, and Frances Ford Coppola’s Palazzo Margherita Hotel in Bernalda (Basilicata), which Tonio restored.

Rounding out the rich experience, there’s full immersion in Puglia’s culinary culture. Wendy Keller, from Los Angeles, tells me how she enjoyed making mozzarella, tasting fresh-pressed olive oil, baking focaccia in a 600-year-old oven in the nearby town of Altamura, and even going out into the fields with a scythe to harvest wheat.

For Michelle Jones, the experience was transformational. She came to the workshop at a point in her life when she was searching for a new career path. She’d worked in the travel business in Canada, then her software engineer husband was transferred to California’s Silicon Valley, where she found herself in a holding pattern, waiting for working papers to clear. It was time to try something different, and this workshop beckoned. In the lab making frescos and restoring a 200-year-old painting, her artistic side was reawakened, and she moved on to study Art History at Stanford University.

Michelle also fondly recalls the spontaneous, Italian style with which the program was run: “There was a day when we took off to go the beach, and on the way pulled off the road when we saw a tree ripe with apricots, and picked them to have with our lasagna picnic. We built a big bonfire on the beach and Tonio got out his guitar and improvised verses of songs about each of us. That was a while back, and I’m still in contact with the women who were with me on that beach.”

Sounds to me like Golden Days await for those who join in.

Messors, Italy Workshops (www.messors.com): Offers art restoration, culinary, and shepherding workshops.