Property Description

Huge Luxury Apartment in Palermo, in a Historic Palazzo Building at the Heart of the Region’s Biggest City

On the fourth floor of a prestigious palazzo building with a long local history, Appartamento Bianca is a chance not only to move to Palermo but to place yourself at the very heart of the city’s life. Totally renovated in 2019, it is presented in excellent condition.

While the 204m2 property would make a beautiful luxury home, there is also an opportunity to run your own business here. The vendors have operated it as a Bed and Breakfast, with two bedrooms for rent by the night. You would certainly have enough space to comfortably continue this arrangement if you chose.

Whether you’re using your new luxury apartment in Palermo as a permanent home, a base for regular visits to Sicily or as commercial accommodation, it’s perfectly positioned barely more than a hundred metres away from the main Centrale railway station. This handsome terminus is the first point of arrival for millions of visitors every year, whether they arrive by train, coach or shuttle bus into the city from the airport. The building, in fact, is also home to several other thriving B&Bs.

With four metre ceilings and huge windows, Appartamento Bianca is extremely bright and airy. The fourth is the penultimate floor, close to the height of the buildings opposite, allowing for plenty of natural light and sunshine to enter from the south. Lovely frescoes on the ceilings have been lovingly restored, a detail which is sure to charm your visitors, regardless of whether we’re talking about family and friends or paying guests.

The Property

After entering the palazzo through an enormous and impressive front door in antique hardwood and along a marbled hallway, the apartment can be reached either by a shared stairwell or elevator. As soon as you step through the front door the chequerboard floor makes an elegant first impression, as does the beautiful detailing above.

A long, broad entrance hall leads you into the enormous living room, over 30m2 with floors in a fabulously realised combination of wooden floorboards that frame original decorative Sicilian tiles. A full-length window opens onto a well-sized balcony, and another window is very nearly as tall, offering a view of via Trento outside and the arterial via Roma away to your right.

Like the palazzo in which Bianca stands, much of the surrounding building is in the Liberty style, harking back to the early twentieth century and Palermo’s previous golden age of power and prosperity.

The spacious kitchen is sunny and colourful. Again there is a strong Sicilian flavour with the locally-themed patterns in the cementine floor. The fittings shown will not be included in the sale, but they give a good sense of the potential the room offers.

The three bedrooms are all large and bright, with more decorative tiling, meticulously decorated ceilings and tall windows. Two of them have en-suite bathrooms with box showers, and the pick of them, in blue, has a private balcony overlooking the street. There is a further bathroom and an additional WC with connections to install a washing machine. The toilets, bidets, sinks and showers will remain in the property. A room not shown in our virtual tour but marked on the plan next to the living room has potential to be another bedroom, an office or a lounge.

Following the renovation work the electric and plumbing infrastructure is all certified and in excellent condition, and the property’s paperwork sailed through our records check with no red flags.

Surroundings

As well as the proximity to the station, Appartamento Bianca is also just off one of Palermo’s main thoroughfares, via Roma, home to the city’s palatial Post Office and running as far as the Politiama theatre. You can get buses almost outside your front door, and the whole old town is within walking distance.

Nor is this just a practical position for your luxury apartment in Palermo. The La Kalsa quarter, which opens up behind the B&B, is the most visitor-friendly and charming part the city. You’ll find lots of small independent shops and restaurants. The neighbourhood is also the hub of the city’s nightlife, although the closest bars are a few hundred metres from this street, so you won’t have any issue with noise.

Within easy walking distance are the green spaces of Piazza Magione, a popular hangout with live music events in the summer, Piazza Garibaldi, home to Europe’s largest tree (no, really!), the city’s Botanic Gardens and the seafront Foro Italico park. The newly revamped marina, with its fashionable eateries and elaborately choreographed fountains, is just a short distance further on.

Inland the city unfolds in a complex web of history and culture, both high and low. Whether you want world-class opera or legendary street food you will find it in abundance. Read our comprehensive guide to life in Palermo for much more detail.

Centrale station allows for easy travel all over Sicily and beyond. Did you know that you can take a train directly from Palermo to Rome or even Milan without there even being a bridge to the mainland? An ingenious system sees the vehicle roll onto and off a ferry without ever leaving the tracks. The vineyards of Trapani and Marsala, the unforgettable seafront of Cefalù and the great temples of Agrigento are all easily accessible by train or bus. Public transport to the airport takes less than an hour.

Potential

With the property in such great condition, the only work to be done would be optional. If you want to use it as a private residence then you might want to change the allocation of spaces a bit, which would obviously suggest some redecoration, but there would be no pressing need to invest anything more.

As we suggested earlier, if you are planning to run it as a hospitality business then we would be inclined to add some extra bedrooms. There could be four or even five if you were focused on maximising your sleeping capacity.

In fact, we’ve thought about this property quite a lot more since we first became aware that it would be coming on the market. If you like the idea of investing in the region’s booming tourist economy and a city that is well and truly on the rise, but aren’t at a point where you would consider moving here on a full-time basis, we would be interested in a partnership arrangement where our sister company, Solemar Sicilia, would manage the B&B. If you’re interested and would like to discuss this idea in more depth, we would be very pleased to share with you a very detailed 3 year business plan.

We can also offer our own services if you need any project management for renovation work, and put you in contact with top quality colleagues if you would like any legal or accountancy advice on how to run your own B&B here or any other issue related to this beautiful luxury apartment in Palermo.