Property Description

Charming One-bedroom Holiday Apartment near Palermo, 150 Metres from the Sea in the Picturesque Fishing Village of Porticello

This charming one-bedroom ‘Fisherman’s House’ is a beautiful holiday apartment near Palermo – specifically in Porticello, a coastal village in the district of Santa Flavia on Sicily’s north coast.

With great character and superb location only 150m from the seafront, it’s an ideal holiday home whether you plan on keeping it all for private use, putting it on the market as a rental property – or perhaps a bit of both!

We’re such big fans of Porticello that we even opened an office here, just around the corner from Casa del Pescatore. We’d love nothing more than to show you around and help you make the absolute most out of this pretty little seaside apartment.

The Property

The flat is on on the first floor of a two-storey building that is on the corner of a quiet street and a little courtyard. Reached up a well-maintained communal staircase, it is compact but very welcoming.

You enter into a living room which receives plenty of natural light from south-facing French windows. These open onto a small balcony that offers just the right amount of space to sit and have a morning coffee with the sounds and scent of the sea all around. Terracotta floor tiles have been laid on the diagonal, the walls are in a gentle yellow, and the original doors and windows give a nice sense of the building’s history. A wall-mounted air conditioning unit will keep you comfortable all year round.

The doorway on the left brings you into the recently refurbished kitchen. The door itself has actually been removed, but the deep entrance is still beautifully framed by the old wooden surround. The kitchen itself is extremely smart, with a long wooden worktop and smooth white-fronted cupboards and drawers. The light, natural wood tone picks up the yellows of the warm living room. It’s an almost completely internal space, but natural light makes its way in through the frosted glass bricks that have been installed behind the sink on the wall facing the stairwell, and a very small window does help with ventilation. There’s no oven as things stand, but a modern electric hob makes simple holiday cooking easy.

The bedroom is modestly sized, about 14m2, but dual exposition with windows to the south and east makes it really well lit. The floor here is a smoother, more polished tile. The same shade of paint has been used on the walls and with the comfy furnishings and low lampshade it feels wonderfully cosy.

The bathroom is found off the kitchen, and is tiled almost floor-to-ceiling in an unobtrusive blue-grey pattern tub. A bathtub has been partially enclosed behind a perspex screen so you can use it as a shower with no hassle. There is a washing machine and an electric water heater which also delivers hot water to the kitchen.

Surroundings

Porticello is the marina of Santa Flavia, a very typical and unspoilt Sicilian town which is well off the tourist trail, despite its natural beauty. In total the municipality is home to about 10,000 people, though Porticello still feels beautifully ‘villagey’. There are, however, shops of all kinds, pharmacies, medical services and everything you would need on a daily basis. A supermarket is only 300m away.

The seafront is a beautiful and varied stretch of coast, with a busy fishing marina, seafood restaurants, a stretch of promenade, a sandy beach and a rocky cove. All of these can be found a five to ten minute walk from your front door.

Overlooking the town is the beautiful natural park of Monte Catalfano and the important archaeological site of Solunto.

The train station in Santa Flavia itself is no more than 15 minutes away on foot, meaning that you can get from your front door to the centre of Sicily’s bustling metropolitan capital, Palermo in under forty minutes. If you prefer to take a car the drive could even be slightly shorter, depending on traffic.

Alternatively you can head east, towards Messina, a beautiful seafront highway that leads you past the dazzling Medieval beach town of Cefalù and the great natural parks of the Madonie and Nebrodi mountains.

The airport can be reached in just 45 minutes by car or a little over an hour by public transport.

Potential

You don’t need to spend anything up-front on Casa del Pescatore. It’s not in need of any renovation work, and the electrics and plumbing are in good shape.

One minor improvement you might think about making would be the windows – while the old wooden frames have been nicely restored they are only singly glazed. With only one French window, one larger window and three small ones to think about it would not need a huge investment to make the step-up to some more energy-efficient models. And again, the current ones are no obstacle to living comfortably here, especially if you are buying mostly for summer use.

A big bonus is that the property has both CIR and CIN certificates. These are important bits of paperwork to have in order if you want to rent the flat out as a holiday home.

If you aren’t planning a permanent move to Sicily and want to let the holiday apartment near Palermo pay its own way, we/d love to put you in touch with Solemar Sicilia, a sister company of ours. They have been managing tourist rentals all over the island for many years and would be perfectly positioned to give you advice on everything from marketing your property to staying on top of all the legalities. They even have the local staff necessary to help with cleaning and guest management in your absence.