Villa Florinda – Ribera

• 16 Rooms

• 4 Bathroom

• 378 m²

• Ground floor

Villa Florinda – Twin-Apartment Country Home near Ribera with Olive Grove, Panoramic Terraces and Total Privacy; a Fabulous Sea-View Villa in Sicily

Villa Florinda is a large and luxurious two-storey home in the quiet countryside of Ribera, some 60km south of Sicily's bustling capital city, Palermo. Built 35 years ago and maintained with care ever since, it holds two essentially independent apartments, each with its own entrance. It has been continuously lived in and cared for since 1992. A large garage, several storerooms and generous outdoor space complete the picture.

Inside, marble floors, hardwood doors and generously sized rooms reflect the quality of the original construction. The layout was clearly drawn up with a big family in mind. The grounds are fully fenced and accessed through an automatic gate. Mostly flat, they are planted with a fine grove of eighty productive olive trees, augmented with some fruits, prickly pears and well-established ornamental planting. The open landscape beyond runs down to the sea, five kilometres away, and the views are stellar - never better than from the terrace upstairs. 

This is a real jewel, and a great example of how far your budget can go in southern Italy. Spacious and private, the sea-view villa in Sicily's south offers enough room and the divided space for two households. You could buy it with friends or family, offer one to visitors, or if you didn't need all the space all the time, one apartment could even earn its keep as a holiday home.

The villa is fully habitable and holds a habitability certificate, and while there is a little foundation work that will need to be addressed, there is absolutely no need to plan any renovation. As soon as you complete the purchase you will be able to move in and start enjoying this stylish pair of family homes.

The Property

The driveway winds through a shady curve up to a broad flagstone-paved terrace in front of the house. Parking for four or five cars is arranged below the house, with a covered carport for two more beside the large garage. That keeps the terrace itself free for outdoor living. An ornate doorway frames a hardwood front door into the ground-floor apartment.

A central entrance hall neatly bisects the home. To the left are a large study, easily used as a fourth bedroom, and an elegant sitting room. Its big windows look out over the olive grove, with the sea in the distance. To the right, a generous dining room connects to a traditional masonry kitchen. Sunny and big enough to eat in, the kitchen adjoins a practical laundry room, and a guest WC serves the entrance area. Beyond the dining room lie three bedrooms. The main one has a private bathroom, and a further bathroom serves the other two.

The marble floors introduced above run smooth and consistent through all the daytime rooms. They're a different, deeper colour than the ones found in so many Sicilian homes, giving real depth and a sense of refinement. In the bedroom wing they give way to parquet wooden floors laid in a herringbone pattern and of course the kitchen and bathrooms are tiled. The windows have been maintained well and, despite not being the very latest generation, are in no need of replacement.

An external staircase finished in terracotta tiles climbs the front of the villa to the first-floor apartment, where the upper home is completely independent in every way. Its heart is a big, bright open space combining living room, dining area and kitchen. Sloping ceilings rise to a soaring central pitch, and the floors are laid in distinctive hexagonal tiles. Panoramic terraces open at either end, looking across the olive grove and countryside to the sea. There are two bedrooms, one large and one cosier, plus a bathroom and a technical room for the boiler and air conditioning plant.

The rear terrace is ideal for al fresco dining, with a fixed canopy sheltering an outdoor kitchen. An outside shower is also located here, perfect for rinsing off the sand on your way home from the beach, or simply cooling off after a day in the hot sun.. 

Each apartment has its own LPG-fired boiler for heating and hot water, and several air conditioning units are fitted. The automatic gate mentioned earlier is backed up by video surveillance. Water comes from two 10,000-litre cisterns refilled by tanker. A phone call normally brings a delivery within a few hours, at roughly €40 per 10,000 litres, so daily management is simple. Drainage runs to a two-tank septic system. Everything you can see in our photos and virtual tour is included in the sale.

Surroundings

Villa Florinda is found in the hillside neighbourhood known as Contrada Torre, about 125 metres above sea level in the farming country of Agrigento province. Olive groves and tall pines shape the landscape here. The state road serving the area is in excellent condition, and the villa's gate is only about 100 metres from it. The approach suits any normal car. Just a handful of properties lie nearby, none of them facing the villa's main spaces, so the plot feels entirely your own.

Ribera itself is close at hand, although the walk up to town is a climb, so a car makes life easier. The town is famous for its oranges, including the eponymous Ribera variety, protected by DOP status. It's a year-round community, and its shops, pharmacies and medical services stay open all year round. With around 17,000 residents, however, it falls helpfully below the population threshold for Italy's most generous relocation tax incentives.

From this sea-view villa in Sicily you can be on the sand in about fifteen minutes. The nearest beaches are at Seccagrande, Borgo Bonsignore and the nature reserve at the mouth of the River Platani. The coastline faces south, the sand is plentiful and even in August it never feels crowded. Sciacca, with its harbour, historic centre and restaurants, is twenty to twenty-five minutes away. If you prefer mountains, the Monti Sicani natural park begins 15km to the north.

Agrigento and the Valley of the Temples are about an hour to the east. Along the way you pass Eraclea Minoa, the Torre Salsa reserve and the Scala dei Turchi. The province of Trapani begins some 40km to the west, and its great archaeological park at Selinunte is a similar drive in the opposite direction. The airports at Trapani and Palermo are each between an hour and three quarters and two hours by car.

Potential

The one piece of work to plan concerns a bit of earth movement that has caused some cracking in one part of the building. The owners have already commissioned geological and geotechnical surveys, and they hold a quotation for the consolidation work and the cosmetic repairs to follow. The scope and cost are therefore defined before you commit. The planning status of the outdoor kitchen and shower should also be checked and, where necessary, regularised. We can put you in touch with trustworthy professionals who handle exactly this sort of paperwork. Beyond that, nothing is required, and any updating of the electrics or heating would be an optional improvement for the years ahead.

The biggest potential lies outside. We'd love to see a private swimming pool take advantage of the flattish land and open view, and can't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to obtain the necessary planning permission. You might tuck it into the olive grove to offer a secluded corner among the trees, or redesign the rear terrace area, where the outdoor kitchen and shower are currently located, and create an infinity pool with an unforgettable sea view.

The two apartments introduced at the start of this listing open up choices as well. You could live in one and let the other as a short-term rental. Our sister company Solemar Sicilia can advise on marketing and pricing for holiday lets.

If you decide to take on the pool, our project management service handles quotes, permissions and tradespeople on your behalf. We are the only agency in Sicily to offer this across all our properties. For anyone making the move permanently, our Welcome to Sicily relocation service takes care of the practical side of settling in. It all makes this sea-view villa in Sicily a very realistic first home.