House for sale - Mistretta (Italy)

Casa Mariolina - MistrettaA magical place to get away from your cares and spend time in nature, Casa Mariolina is a one-storey cottage on an acre of sea-view land in northern Sicily.The wild beauty of the nebrodi parkSicily's largest natural park, the Nebrodi is a vast, mountainous region whose lower hills are characterised by leafy green hillsides and a quiet, unspoilt natural beauty. The estate on which Casa Mariolina has been built is a perfect embodiment of this, with sixty olive trees and all manner of wild fruits overlooking a deep valley, with views stretching as far as the Tyrrhenian Sea, ten kilometres to the north.It's a beautiful and fabulously relaxing spot to unwind and get back in touch with your friends and family. Everything is geared towards the social experience, with an open plan cottage, a deep covered veranda and an outdoor kitchen that would be a dream come true for any ambitious chef.A delight for any chefOn a terrace slightly above the main house, back along the driveway towards the main road, a huge area has been flattened, paved with terracotta tiles, and enclosed with a handrail. Here you find the incredible outdoor kitchen, with a barbecue grill, twin wood-fired ovens and a deep vat above a fourth fireplace. Two large chimneys transport the smoke above the tiled wooden canopy overhead. There is also a sink, fridge and worktop. Absolutely everything you need to prepare a rustic feast.Outside the cottage, on the veranda, are a pair of long dining tables, and indoors are two more. You could easily feed twenty or more people at once, a testament to the role that communal living - and above all communal eating – have always played in the life of Casa Mariolina. Of course, there is also an indoor kitchen space to rustle up a simpler snack. But if you love nature and you love to entertain, this cottage in the hills would make an unbeatable place to combine the two.A versatile indoor spaceThe open plan cottage consists of a single large room, with a lounge area that becomes a bedroom with the use of a sofa bed, a dining space in the middle and a kitchen at the far end. Two separate entrances would allow you to create a proper bedroom if you wanted to. The bathroom has a shower and is neatly finished with a clean white tile.Completing the estate, which spans three parcels of land, is a storeroom for all of the equipment necessary to maintain the land and its trees. The property is sold as seen in our photos and video, including all fixtures and furniture.For a full description of the property please visit our website Want to know more?

Casa Marinella - MistrettaA fabulous value-for-money proposition for a buyer with a little time to invest and the appetite for a renovation, Casa Marinella is a four-bedroom villa with an unbeatable view.Miles of Stunning Hillside Laid Out in Front of YouOn the western edges of the Nebrodi Natural Park, less than four kilometres from the hilltop town of Mistretta, Casa Marinella stands on the western bank of a dramatic valley, which plunges 400m downhill over just a couple of kilometres, directly to the rear of the house. With the mountains opposite rising up to peaks over a thousand metres above sea level, and the waters of the Mediterranean visible on the horizon away to your left, it's a magical panorama almost completely undisturbed by human activity.The two-storey villa has been built to take full advantage of this, at the top of a 4,000m2 plot filled with over a hundred olive and fruit trees, but offering an uninterrupted view over their green canopy from the ground floor terrace and the balcony upstairs. The lower level has nearly 50m2 of mostly covered patio, including an outdoor kitchen with traditional stone fireplaces and grill. This is a property which will transport you to a simpler way of life, in contact with nature and the food chain.220M2 of living space on two floorsOf course, there is also a conventional kitchen indoors with an antique bread oven, none the less spacious and with room for a family dining table. Joining it on the ground floor are a living room whose window overlooks the valley, and a bedroom with en-suite bathroom. Each of these last two spaces have patio doors straight out onto the terrace. On the first floor you'll find four more rooms and a second bathroom, although the fixtures for this are yet to be installed. Two of the rooms have valley views (even taking in the sea seven kilometres to the north, on a clear day), and the home is flanked by the balcony on two sides. To the rear there is another terrace, a large flat space which takes full advantage of the gradient of the land.A renovation project with a fabulous payoffThere is a lot of work to be done before Casa Marinella can be said to be truly complete – the upper floor in particular is very much a work in progress. The walls need to be plastered and even, in some points, raised to the level of the roof. The floor is still in cement, and all of the decoration will need to be done from scratch. Of course, the advantage of this is that you can set the place up to look exactly as you would like.The ground floor could be used straight away, and indeed you could live there while working upstairs. At some point it, too, will need a fair amount of work however, with the wiring, windows and bathroom all in particular need of attention. Casa Marinella is definitely a project house – but for the sum of the purchase price and an investment around €100,000 you could own a really stunning big home fifteen minutes from the sea in one of Sicily's most underrated regions.For a full description of the property please visit our website Want to know more?