Villa Maurice – Trabia

• 11 Rooms

• 2 Bathroom

• 207 m²

• Raised

Casa Maurice – Sea-view House near Trabia on Sicily’s North Coast; a Two-apartment Property with Garden and Off-street Parking in the Hills above San Nicola l’Arena

Casa Maurice is a beautiful Sea-view house near Trabia, set into a quiet hillside about 200 metres above the Tyrrhenian coast. Built some thirty years ago and partially renovated by the previous French owners five years back, it looks out over the sea from a position that catches plenty of sun. It's the perfect spot to build a private swimming pool.

The house is divided into two self-sufficient apartments, one on each floor, each with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a storage room and an open living, dining and kitchen area. This would suit a family wanting separate space for visiting relatives or grown-up children just as easily as an owner planning to live in one half and let the other.

Trabia is found on Sicily’s north coast, in a convenient location that's convenient for the sun-drenched beaches and the region's thrilling capital city, Palermo. a little west of the peninsula around Bagheria, where the wild Mongerbino headland and the fishing village of Porticello draw plenty of second-home buyers of their own. Above San Nicola l’Arena, this stretch of coast offers the same sea and sun with rather less competition for space.

There is no significant work that needs to be done on Casa Maurice, only the kind of cosmetic maintenance you would expect after thirty years. It would be entirely possible to buy a house here and move in with very little delay.

The Property

As outlined above, each floor is laid out as two bedrooms, a bathroom and a storage room arranged around an open living, dining and kitchen area. Across its two floors, this Sea-view House near Trabia offers over 200 square metres of living space in total, on a plot of about 1,000m2 that slopes gently towards the sea.

Sturdy gates open onto a fully fenced garden, giving the kind of privacy that is not always easy to find in a villa district like this one. The grounds are planted with Mediterranean fruit trees, ornamental trees and a number of well-established olive trees, with parking and a driveway close to the house. An external staircase leads up to the first floor flat, while the ground floor apartment has its own separate entrance at garden level, keeping the two units fully independent.

Upstairs, under a slightly sloping attic ceiling, the apartment opens into a bright living, dining and kitchen area of around 30 square metres in total, lit by three windows, with the kitchen occupying roughly nine square metres of the total. The two bedrooms measure around 15 and 14 square metres, and both they and the bathroom have their own window. A separate storage room opens off the corridor. The roughly 20 square metre terrace outside, where the sea view mentioned above is at its best, has an outdoor staircase running straight down to the driveway and parking area.

The ground floor flat follows the same basic plan, with two bedrooms of a similar size, an open living and dining space of around 24 square metres and a separate kitchen of about eight. It is in particularly good decorative order, and its bathroom has been fully modernised with a generously sized glass shower enclosure.

Throughout the house the floors are finished in modern grey tiles, laid in a more varied pattern in the kitchens and bathrooms. All of the windows have been replaced with insulated aluminium frames that tilt for ventilation, fitted with integrated fly screens and traditional shutters; these, along with the guttering and drainpipes, are finished in mahogany tones against the smooth off-white render of the façade.

Surroundings

San Nicola l’Arena, the small fishing district below this Sea-view house near Trabia, is about five minutes away by car and has supermarkets, a pharmacy, banks and a choice of restaurants and bars, along with a marina where you could keep a boat and a morning fish market selling the day’s catch. A further few minutes inland brings you to the centre of Trabia itself, with a broader range of shops and services.

San Nicola also has its own train station, with regular services that reach the centre of Palermo, and the location of the nearest international airport, in around half an hour, and the medieval old town of Cefalù in about the same time. By car, Palermo and its airport are roughly half an hour and 45 minutes away respectively, while Cefalù is around 35 minutes east along the coast.

The Monte Catalfano Nature Park and the wider Madonie mountains offer hiking with sweeping views back over this part of the coastline. Bagheria, introduced above for its coastline, is equally known inland for the eccentric Baroque villas built by Sicilian nobility, Villa Palagonia chief among them, and along the shore towards Palermo you will find further coves and beaches around Altavilla Milicia and Mongerbino.

Potential

The two independent apartments mentioned above give Casa Maurice real flexibility, whether as a single family home or a part-time rental investment. There is little structural work to consider: the exterior plasterwork could use a fresh coat of paint and the guttering needs a clean, but nothing points to underlying problems with the masonry or services. The vendor will also clear a couple of outbuildings and some old furniture from the garden before completion.

A few projects would really maximise the value of the home. A wood-burning insert in one of the open fireplaces, combined with the air conditioning already installed, would keep the house comfortable through the cooler months at this elevation. The first floor bathroom could be brought up to the same standard as the one below, and a rooftop solar installation would cover a good part of the electricity bill. 

The sloping garden, with its sea view, is an ideal spot for an infinity pool, exactly the kind of project our project management team could lead on your behalf, if you wanted.

Letting one apartment as a short-term holiday rental while you live in the other is another option worth exploring. Our colleagues at Solemar Sicilia manage such lets across the island and could advise on what is realistic here.

The grey tones favoured by the outgoing owners give the rooms a clean, neutral base, but a little Sicilian colour, in painted ceramics or a few traditional Sicilian majolica tiles, would enliven with it without any structural change. If a permanent move to Sicily is part of your plans, our Welcome to Sicily service can take care of everything from utilities to paperwork.