Salt air drifts up from the Mediterranean and settles over a rocky hillside on the north coast of Sicily, where waves crash loud enough to hear from the bedroom windows on a rough day. Look out toward the horizon and you can count them, one by one, up to six or seven volcanic silhouettes rising out of the sea. Those are the Aeolian Islands, and from almost every room of this villa, they are simply there, waiting for you every single morning.
Turn the other way and there is a medieval seaside town clinging to a cliff, a UNESCO World Heritage site with roots going back to Roman and Greek times, visible even from the master bathroom. This is the view we get to wake up to every day, and it is the same view that a family from Florence once owned but eventually stopped seeing at all. We want to walk you through how we found this place, what it looked like when we got it, and what it took to bring it back to life.
The Story Behind Our Abandoned Sicilian Villa
We found this property online during a ten week COVID lockdown in early 2020. Jeia had always wanted a sea view, and out of sheer boredom she started browsing listings, which is how she stumbled onto this one.
The villa had been in the hands of a wealthy family from Florence for nearly a century. It started as their summer residence, but as the generations passed, interest in the property faded along with the upkeep.
By the time we found it, the family had already been trying to sell for five years without any luck. Nobody seemed to know how to market a property this overgrown and this far gone.
We drove seven hours straight down to Sicily the very next day to see it in person. What we found needed serious vision, but the location could not be replicated anywhere else on earth.
We ended up negotiating a price that came in at more than 60 percent below their original asking price. It meant a mountain of work ahead of us, but it also meant we got our diamond in the rough for pennies on the dollar.
Touring the Villa’s Transformation
The villa itself was built in 1971 directly on the site of an ancient medieval three room house that once had a bamboo roof. You can still see it built right into the rock of the hillside, with the stone visible along one wall.
The Long Dark Corridor We Just Had to Open Up
When we first walked through, the center of the house on both floors was one long, dark hallway, stretching up to 65 feet from end to end. Carlo cannot stand hallways, and Jeia has always preferred open floor plans, so this was one of the first things that had to go.
The original layout also had ten bedrooms and only two bathrooms, which tells you a lot about how the space was being used, or rather, not used. We reworked the whole footprint, turning smaller chopped up rooms into larger, open living spaces.
A Reinforced Concrete Shell With Hidden Potential
The good news underneath all that clutter was the bones of the house. It was a solid, rectangular cube of reinforced concrete, which gave us a lot of flexibility once we started opening things up.
That flexibility came at a cost, though. These were not simple wood and sheetrock walls you can kick down like in the States. Some of the concrete walls were a foot thick, others were more than two feet of brick, cement, mortar, and stone.
The full renovation of the structure alone took nearly two years, with a huge amount of demolition before we could even start rebuilding.
The Ancient Spring and Rainwater Tank We Inherited
When we first inspected the property, there was no real water supply to speak of. The family had been collecting rainwater off the roof through an ugly pipe that ran to a storage tank about 60 feet away.
It turned out there had once been a natural spring feeding the property through the rock up in the mountain. When a freeway was built through those mountains years ago, the construction cut off that spring entirely, forcing the family into the rainwater workaround we found.
The Wild Jungle We Cleared Around the Villa
The land, or terreno (land) as we say now, was just as neglected as the house. Decades without any care meant the trees had shot straight up chasing sunlight, turning the grounds into a genuine jungle around the villa.
It took real vision to see past all of that overgrowth to the mature olive grove underneath. At one point, the family had cultivated over a thousand olive trees here. Today we are tending about 50 of those same centuries old trees.
We also uncovered three stone medieval ruins scattered across the property, a surprise we were not expecting when we signed on for this project.
The Mediterranean Sea View That Changed Everything
Here is the thing about the view from this villa. We knew going in that there was a sea view, but we had no idea just how much it would define daily life here.
The property sits on the north coast of Sicily with a full 180 degrees of open Mediterranean in front of it. On a rough day, you can actually hear the waves from up at the house.
This stretch of coastline is also part of what is called Zona Bandiera Blu (Blue Flag Zone), a designation given to some of the cleanest, least polluted waters in the world. That alone was a wonderful surprise to discover after the fact.
Then there are the Aeolian Islands themselves, all seven of them, with six visible on a clear day from nearly every room inside the house. And just 30 minutes away sits that medieval UNESCO town we mentioned earlier, visible right from the master bathroom.
Ironically, the original design of the house did everything it could to hide this view. We think it came from a very Sicilian instinct toward conservation, closing things up to save energy rather than opening them toward the sea. Our entire renovation philosophy became the opposite of that: open up the living space, bring in natural light, and exploit that view for everything it is worth.
Property Highlights of Our Sicilian Villa
- North coast of Sicily, within the Zona Bandiera Blu (Blue Flag Zone) for water cleanliness
- Sea view of up to seven Aeolian Islands, visible from nearly every room
- About 17.5 acres (roughly 7 hectares) of sea frontage along the Mediterranean
- Original structure built in 1971 on the site of an ancient medieval three room house
- Originally 10 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms before renovation
- Mature olive grove with centuries old trees, about 50 currently cultivated
- Three stone medieval ruins on the property
- An ancient natural spring plus rainwater collection system
- 30 minutes from a UNESCO World Heritage seaside town
- Nearly two year full renovation of the reinforced concrete structure
- Watch the full villa transformation tour
- Featured in Episode 4
Please note: our property tours stay online long after filming, and homes like this tend to sell quickly, so this one may no longer be available. If it has already sold, we can still help you find something similar. Tell us your dream, and we’ll help make it real.
Our Diamond in the Rough on Sicily’s Coast
Looking back, it is hard to believe this villa sat unsold for five years before we ever laid eyes on it. What looked like an overgrown, dark, water starved property to everyone else looked like a once in a lifetime opportunity to us.
The sea view alone made it worth every hour of demolition, every truckload of concrete debris, and every burned pile of decades old belongings we sorted through. Waking up to the Aeolian Islands out your window is not something you find twice.
We took a structure nobody wanted and turned it into the home Jeia had been dreaming about since long before we ever set foot in Sicily. The bones were always good, they just needed someone willing to see past the clutter.
If a property like this can go from dilapidated family cast off to a light filled home with a 180 degree Mediterranean view, it says a lot about what is still possible on this island for the right buyer with the right vision.
