Salt air drifts up the hillside long before you reach the front door of Casa Davide, carrying the scent of ripe olives and sun warmed stone. You step out onto a wraparound balcony and the whole northern coast of Sicily opens up in front of you, the Mediterranean stretching out in that impossible shade of blue, with the silhouettes of the Aeolian Islands floating on the horizon.
This is the kind of view that stops you mid sentence. From the upper floor you can pick out Alicudi in the distance, home to barely a hundred people and a lot of goats, and Filicudi just behind it. Picture your morning espresso up here, or a glass of wine at sunset while the olive trees below turn silver in the fading light. That is daily life at Casa Davide, and it can be yours for €99,000.
The Story of Casa Davide and Its Caronia Setting
This estate sits in the comune (municipality) of Caronia, on Sicily’s northern coast, just five to ten minutes outside the town of Santo Stefano di Camastra.
The property was being built as a dream home by a man named Davide, for himself and his family. A recent family tragedy means it is now just him and his eight year old son, and they are moving on to a nearby town.
He is compelled to sell his unfinished dream home at a real loss. That loss is exactly what makes this such a striking opportunity for the right buyer.
The Ground Floor’s Reinforced Concrete Bones
You enter Casa Davide on the ground floor through windows that already frame a future veranda and, just beyond it, your first glimpse of the sea.
The whole structure is built on reinforced concrete columns filled in with a high tensile strength brick called Poroton. This home was built like a battleship, and coming out of the ground alone, Davide had already invested over €100,000 in the structure.
The ground floor has room for a dining area and a future bathroom with beautifully curved walls, all overlooking the olive orchard out back. There is a lot of usable square footage here once it is finished.
The Upper Floor and Its Wraparound Balcony
Upstairs you will find wide openings built for double doors, some of the only pocket doors we have ever seen in an Italian home. Since the walls are brick rather than frame construction, pocket doors take real extra work, and Davide installed four or five of them throughout the house.
This floor opens onto a balcony that wraps around three sides of the home. From here you look out over the olive orchard and fruit trees on one side, and the open Mediterranean on the other.
There is also a well on the property with 6,000 liters of storage tanks for water, plus another storage room tucked behind a pocket door.
The Roof Terrace, Built for Sunset Aperitivo with Sweeping Sea Views
Climb one more flight and you reach the fully waterproofed roof terrace (terrazzo). Rebar runs continuously from the foundation all the way up through this level, which means Davide already has permission to add a wood or aluminum tettoia (roof structure) up here if a future owner wants one.
Standing on this terrace, looking out at the water with the Aeolian Islands hanging on the horizon, it is hard to argue this is not what defines a dream home. This is the vantage point that sells the whole property.
The Olive Grove, Fruit Trees, and Outbuildings
Descending through the property you walk straight through a well maintained olive grove and fruit orchard (frutteto). These trees have been cared for right up to this year, which matters, because bringing a neglected grove back to production can take several years of hard pruning.
Davide had set up a dog house and space for chickens and goats on the land. There is also an above ground pool he built for his son, plus an outbuilding for garden tools and a separate exterior bathroom for workers, a detail we appreciated enough to copy on our own property.
The land itself is about 4,000 square meters (about 1 acre), and remarkably level for a hilltop parcel. It is easy to maintain and easy to imagine expanding into a small compound over time.
A Home Engineered for Sicily’s Earthquakes
One detail worth pulling out on its own is that Casa Davide was designed and permitted to be fully anti-seismic. Reinforced concrete columns run from the foundation into the ground and continue all the way past the roofline.
Between each column sits a joint of polystyrene, allowing the structure to flex slightly in an earthquake rather than cracking the walls. All of this construction was done with proper permission from the comune, built to code or better.
Finishing the interior from here is estimated at somewhere between €50,000 and €75,000 depending on the fixtures and finishes you choose. Even on the higher end, you are looking at well under €200,000 all in for a completed estate property that would run into seven figures in many parts of the world.
Property Highlights of Casa Davide
- 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom fully permitted home
- Roughly 4,000 square meters (about 1 acre) of level, usable land
- Above ground swimming pool
- Mature, well maintained olive orchard and fruit trees
- Outbuildings with conversion potential, plus a separate exterior bathroom for workers
- Panoramic Mediterranean sea views, including the Aeolian Islands of Alicudi and Filicudi
- Located in the comune of Caronia, five to ten minutes from Santo Stefano di Camastra
- Anti-seismic reinforced concrete construction, built and permitted to code
- Seller motivated, selling below market value due to a family tragedy
- Watch the full property tour
- Featured in Episode 82
- Asking price: €99,000
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.
Final Thoughts on This Dream Sea View Estate in Caronia
Casa Davide is not a finished house you move into next week. It is a structurally superior shell, already permitted, already anti-seismic, already sitting on an acre of level land with an olive grove and a view most people only dream about.
What makes it remarkable is the math. A near completed estate like this, with panoramic Mediterranean sea views over the Aeolian Islands, would run into the millions in Northern California or plenty of other places we have called home. Here, between the €99,000 asking price and a reasonable finishing budget, you are still well under €200,000.
The story behind the sale is a sad one, and we do not take that lightly. But it does mean an opportunity like this rarely sits on the market for long.
If you can picture your mornings on that wraparound balcony, looking out toward Alicudi and Filicudi with the olive trees below you, this could be the piece of la dolce vita (the sweet life) you have been waiting for.
