Property Description

Twin Sicilian Holiday Homes Sleeping Eight; Just Twenty Minutes from the Caribbean-style Beach of San Vito Lo Capo

Casa Concetta is a long thin bungalow housing two residential units. 
These measure 69 m² and 60 m² respectively, but can each sleep four in comfort. Ceilings almost three metres tall and smooth, bright walls and enchanting outdoor spaces mean that they make very comfortable holiday homes.

Each apartment is totally independent and has a kitchen-living room, bathroom and the bedrooms.
 It’s found in a very quiet area to the north of Trapani, only twenty minutes from the legendary beach of San Vito Lo Capo. Just outside the village of Purgatorio, it’s, surrounded by nature with olive groves stretching back to the foot of a dramatic rocky hillside a kilometre away.

There are a few internal steps, but almost everything else is flat or sloped, with off-street parking directly in front of the house. This makes it ideal house to buy for retired buyers or people with mobility difficulties.

The Property

The twin Sicilian holiday homes share a driveway, and the use of an off-road parking space for two cars. Midway along the building on the eastern side is an external storeroom measuring about 11m2.

Water is from the municipal supply. In summer the supply is active only twice a week, so to guarantee constant supply they also share a very large 10,000 litre cistern.

Lower Apartment: “Red”

Slightly the larger apartment, Red is practically furnished and decorated. It enjoys a shady veranda at the front and an open terrace, paved in a nice local stone.

The kitchen-living room is 21m2 and comfortably big enough to offer separate areas for cooking, eating and relaxing. Windows to the east and west offer through light and great ventilation. The kitchen is a simple layout with cream wall-mounted cupboards and extra storage beneath a fixed counter top in stone and a large sink. A free-standing oven sits under an electric hob. The tiled backsplash is in a marbled grey, and the floor in the same terracotta as the veranda.

From here you pass directly into three consecutive bedrooms, two singles and a double. The first, a large single, has a decorative floor in a traditional Sicilian pattern. By floor space it feels like a double, but the positioning of the doorways makes it hard to fit a double bed in. It could be a twin. The bathroom is through one of these, meaning it a more natural living room, but as a holiday home the sleeping capacity is a reasonable priority.

The second bedroom is the double, fairly spacious at about 15m2 and with a comfortable iron-framed bed. The third is a box room which is only really big enough for the single bed and a bedside table. All three of these bedrooms have windows facing west over a neighbouring orchard. The shade from this helps keep them cool in the evenings, if you prefer not to lower the roller blinds which are fitted throughout the house. The first single and the double have air conditioning units.

Upper Apartment: “Blue”

Tastefully furnished and fitted with new windows and hinged shutters, Blue is a slightly more modern apartment. It’s windows are new, in white PVC with insulating glass, and hinged wooden blackout shutters.

As with Red, you enter into the kitchen-living room, a roomy 3x6m with a dining table and sofa. A lovely tile pattern on the floor makes a great first impression. A gas oven and electric hotplate are housed in a new kitchen suite with grey wood-effect doors and metallic trim. A window looks west over the orchard.

The master bedroom, down a couple of steps on your right has a garden view from the east-facing window, letting you wake up with the sun if you like. It’s decorated simply but well, with whitewashed walls and matching furniture. The second bedroom has two singles and a large wardrobe. Both have air conditioning.

A long narrow bathroom leads to a cubicle shower with blue and white tiled walls and a smart white set of ceramics.

Blue has a terrace at the rear in the shade of a gorgeous old olive tree, with an outdoor shower that is absolutely beautiful on a hot day. It will also save you the hassle of sweeping sandy floors when you or your guests come back from the beach! There is a fixed oven built into the wall of the building, and an outdoor sink with a little counter top if you want to cook outdoors in timeless style.

Surroundings

Casa Concetta is directly to the south of the SP16 provincial road, at the entrance to the little village of Purgatorio. The region is famous for its marble quarries and also its stunning beaches.

The nearest of these is at Custonaci, a lovely sandy cove which is well off the tourist trail and which only takes ten minutes to reach in the car. Alternatively, the seafront of Macari is just fifteen minutes away.

The undoubted main attraction of the region is the beach of San Vito Lo Capo, twenty minutes up the road. This could easily be mistaken for the Caribbean, with its fine white sand and water so clear it almost seems to work as a magnifying glass.

Half an hour is all you need to get to the much smaller but equally magical beach of Scopello, which serves as the gateway to the nature reserve of Lo Zingaro. You can only explore this on foot or by boat, but the feeling of being so surrounded by nature is a wonderful experience.

The most convenient town for bigger stores and amenities is Valderice, on the way to the legendary fortified hilltop community of Erice, said by some historians to be the first settlement in Sicily.

The famous port of Trapani is only half an hour away. Here you will find all the facilities and culture of a small city, including the region’s hospital and the port from which ferries depart for the Egadi islands. The largest of these, Favignana, is about to reach audiences around the world as a principal filming location for Christopher Nolan’s 2026 blockbuster adaptation of The Odyssey.

There are two different airports within an hour’s drive – a small one just south of Trapani and a busier one in Palermo.

Potential

Both Blue and Red have been let out as vacation rentals on major tourist portals with great success. The pair even enjoy a perfect five star rating on Airbnb. A tourist services company next-door-but-one offers vehicle hire and excursions which would be extremely convenient for your guests.

If you want a permanent move to Sicily, perhaps to take advantage of the region’s generous tax breaks for remote and pension income, you could easily make one of the twin Sicilian holiday homes your own and rent out the other.

If we were investing in the property, we would probably start by updating the windows in Red and installing modern shutters. Perhaps a new kitchen would be nice. But everything else is just a question of decoration and personal taste.

There is a bit of work to do on the plastering of the walls and ceiling in the storeroom, but this is hardly an urgent issue unless you are planning to use it in a completely different way.