Property Description

Appartamento Agnello – Historic Sicilian Home to Renovate, with Original Floors and Ceilings, in Collesano at the Entrance to the Madonie

Appartamento Agnello is a two-storey property at the centre of a charming old Sicilian village, Collesano, in the foothills of the fabulous Madonie Natural Park.

The ground floor is in fact a small independent apartment, in need of renovation but with a lovely position and access to a nice shared garden. The first floor, with a separate entrance, is a surprisingly aristocratic apartment in good overall condition, which is currently being used as a doctor’s surgery. The bones of the property are perfect to make a spacious holiday property or a welcoming home with just a touch of historic glamour.

The first glance sets the expectations perfectly: sturdy walls made from exposed stones that seem to have been there forever. Two big, imposing balconies are framed by iron railings which were actually made right here in the workshop on the ground floor. This is a home with heart and history, exactly what so many people are looking for when they dream of buying a property in Sicily.

While it will obviously take a little while to make it seem like a residential property again, and there is definitely work to do on the lower floor, the process of renovating real estate in Sicily is far less of a romantic dream than it once seemed. With the guidance of our project management team and after-sales support, you can let your imagination wander through the possibilities of owning your own little slice of Mediterranean history in the knowledge that you’ll have the most reassuring help possible at your side throughout the entire process.

If your budget for this historic Sicilian home to renovate is limited, or you want to reduce the quantity of work you’re taking on, the vendor is prepared to accept offers of around €20,000 lower than the asking price for the purchase of only the first floor apartment.

To help you make your mind up, let’s see how each part of the building looks at the moment.

The Property

First Floor: The Main Apartment

We’ll start here as this space is the one which will definitely be sold. Accessed up a straight flight of 16 polished steps, this 90m2 space is divided into a hallway, three large rooms, a smaller one, a bathroom and sink. It is complimented by the trio of ample balconies visible from the street, and in fact slightly split between two levels, with the kitchen and bathroom up a half-flight of six stairs to a mezzanine floor.

The entrance hall is 12m2, with a built-in closet for coats and shoes. The floors are a diagonal chequerboard pattern, and a high ceiling makes the room feel reasonably spacious. The only downside is that it is fully internal, meaning that you would need glazed doors in some of the other rooms to allow natural light to reach this space.

The three large rooms measure 16m2, 17m2 and 20m2 respectively. Each is beautiful in its own way, and they could be configured as living or sleeping spaces depending on your preference and needs. We would imagine the smallest of the three, a front-facing room accessed through a door directly to the left of the hallway with French windows opening onto a three metre balcony, as a living room, with the ornately decorated ceiling a stylish counterpoint to a modern interior with deep comfortable sofas and a large bookcase or dresser on one wall to help draw the eye upwards.

Off this is a corner room (the middle sized of the three) which is fabulously bright and airy thanks to a dual exposition. This, too has a balcony, but there is also an ample window facing onto the small piazza outside the front of the property, over a leafy little front garden which belongs to a neighbour. The ceiling is vaulted with smooth arches, giving a faint hint of the medieval to the evocative surroundings. Underfoot is a superb tile pattern in traditional locally-produced majolica.

A smaller room, about eight and a half square metres, connects to both this corner room and the entrance hall. This could be plumbed as a large en-suite bathroom, although this would be to somewhat lose the benefit of the balcony outside. Perhaps it would be best used as a study, especially if you’re taking advantage of the tax breaks for bringing your remote work to Sicily. Alternatively, make the corner space your master bedroom and luxuriate in the comfort of a walk-in dressing room. A low loft space above would allow you to easily rotate seasonal wardrobes in and out as needed.

To the rear of the apartment is the largest room by square metreage, although the ceilings here are lower than those at the front. This gives us the impression of standing in a lovely guest room, highlighted by more beautiful majolica floor tiles, and a window which overlooks the surrounding hills to the west of Collesano.

Passing back through the hallway once more, that semi-flight of stairs brings you up to a compact internal bathroom with a tub, and a much longer kitchen with two windows, one a full-length view over the hill to the west, with the 800m-high hilltop of Montedoro, the mountain of gold, a perfect accent to the stunning Sicilian sunsets.

Ground Floor: Smaller Apartment and Workshop

The ground floor of the historic Sicilian home to renovate has two separate halves – a habitable area with its own separate entrance to the left of the front door as you look from the street, and a rough workspace, behind what was once a garage door but which was partially bricked up some time ago.

This latter used to be a blacksmith’s forge, and it is here that the ironwork on the building was wrought into its decorative shapes. A fairly large, open space, it could be partitioned, although the only windows are in the front portion of the room. This has a genuinely ancient feeling, with an epic stone arch that seems more Game of Thrones than anything else. However, with work and perhaps some plaster in certain sections, it would make a perfect garage, or storeroom. It could even become commercial real estate, with the right paperwork requests. A little shop of some kind or a bar.

The apartment alongside this is split into three rooms. A lovely wooden door brings you into a long entrance hall, and beyond this is a kitchen. Lastly a bedroom has a window overlooking the shared garden at the rear, and connects to a little bathroom with a shower.

This apartment does not have the obvious character of the main one upstairs, but for purchase price which is, effectively, only about €15,000 it would make a great project. Given the good condition it is found in, we are in the territory value usually reserved for one euro home promotions. Perhaps you see it as a guest annexe, an affordable tourist rental or a space to renovate and flip to recoup some of your outlay on the main property upstairs.

Outside, the little garden behind Appartamento Agnello is shared, 50/50, with a neighbour.

The building is connected to municipal supplies for water, electricity and sewage. It is even wired for high speed fibre optic internet

Surroundings

Appartamento Agnello is right at the heart of Collesano, the beautiful friendly village with the growing international community. We have described it in the past as being the perfect place for someone who is looking to move to Sicily before they are completely comfortable with Italian, because the English speakers in the town are so helpful and hospitable. As an added bonus you are only half an hour away from Sicily’s top language school, the our prestigious sister company Solemar Academy, which is found just moments from the pristine golden sands of Cefalù.

You can actually reach a beach in even less time. Twenty minutes is all it takes to make your way 600m down to sea level at Campofelice di Roccella, where you will find a strip of sand that is no less beautiful and far less crowded.

Closer to home, everything you will need on a daily basis is right on your doorstep. The main high street of the town, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, is just a couple of streets away. You’ll find a lovely bakery and a cashpoint 50m from your front door, a bar, pizzeria and the town hall 80m away, and a butcher’s, grocery store and pharmacy within 200m.

Potential

Obviously there will need to be some money spent on the apartment to allow it to live up to its full potential.

The windows and French doora are a priority, in order to make the place more energy efficient. This is going to need a budget of around €15,000. The same sum again will comfortably allow you to replace both the bathroom and kitchen with a lovely new design and updated plumbing. The wiring is old and not up to current code. This is likely to cost around €7,000 to replace to a good standard.

The property does not currently have heating or air conditioning. If you are planning to move permanently to Sicily, and therefore need a property which is comfortable throughout the year, the simplest way to resolve this is to install two-way heat pumps that can cool and heat the property at the touch of a button. You could put these in all of the rooms on the first floor for about €5,000.

The budget required to renovate the lower flat is a little harder to calculate, as it depends so much on what you want to do with the storeroom and what the long-term plan is for the apartment. If you want to talk through any plans you may have with our team, we would be more than happy to help you get quotes and cost out the work.

One thing is for sure – once the full potential of this historic Sicilian home to renovate has been unlocked, the lucky owner will have a real gem of a property, with two apartments, four bedrooms, three bathrooms and two kitchens.