Stand on the little piazzale outside the front door and the first thing you notice is the sound. A loudspeaker crackles down the narrow stone street, some fruit vendor’s truck rolling slowly past, calling out what he’s selling today. You can hear it echo off the walls of the stone houses across the way, and somewhere behind those rooftops, past the terracotta and the laundry lines, there’s a hint of blue.
That blue gets a lot more convincing once you climb three flights and step out onto the rooftop terrace of this house. From up there the historic center of Tusa spreads out below you, and past it, the Tyrrhenian Sea catches the light. This is Casa Volanti, and at €49,000 it is one of the more complete little packages we’ve toured in this town, move-in ready, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a private garage, and that sea view terrace everyone keeps asking us for.
Life on a Piazzale Where Fruit Trucks Sing
Casa Volanti sits right on a small piazzale (little piazza) in Tusa, directly across from a row of characteristic stone homes. It belongs to the Volanti family, and it hasn’t really been lived in for close to 15 years.
The family still comes back occasionally for a party or a gathering, since it’s a big house, but nobody has called it home in a long time. That’s part of why you’ll still find an old tube television and other relics sitting around inside, untouched.
Tusa itself is in the province of Messina, a short drive from Cefalu, Santo Stefano di Camastra, and the rest of the Tyrrhenian coast. It’s one of the more affordable corners of Sicily for buyers coming from the US, the UK, and Canada.
The First Floor Bedrooms and Their Hardwood Shutters
Inside, the stairs and hard finishes are nice marble, and the house is built across three levels plus a ground floor garage. A structural beam runs the width of the house, supported by a single column, which means most of the interior walls could theoretically come down if you wanted a more open layout.
The first floor holds two bedrooms. One is smaller with just obscured glass for light since there’s no window, and the other is larger with a full armadio (wardrobe) bedroom set and a big picture window.
Step out to the first balcony and you’re looking down over the piazzale, with plenty of street parking and the stucco exterior in good shape. Every doorway here has custom hardwood double doors and a mechanized crank shutter system that still works.
The Second Floor Kitchen and Its Old Wood Oven
Up on the second floor is the kitchen, complete with an old wood burning oven and a skylight that pulls in natural light. The gas range is older but genuinely charming, the kind of thing that could clean up beautifully.
The cabinets are dated, but replacing them wouldn’t cost much, maybe around €1,500 if you went with something like IKEA. The porcelain sink with its Carrara marble slab is worth keeping as is.
There’s a dining room with a small window at the front and another on the side that could easily bring in more light with frosted glass. This floor also holds the second of the home’s three bathrooms, a three-quarter bath with its own window.
The Rooftop Terrace and Its Postcard Sea View
The top floor is unfinished attic space, just under 20 square meters (about 215 square feet), with open beam ceilings and some minor termite damage that’s restorable rather than a replacement job.
But the real payoff is stepping outside onto your own private roof terrace. You’re looking straight at the centro storico (historic center), the old stone rooftops of Tusa layered below you, and the sea beyond them.
There’s a stainless steel cistern up there too, since Tusa is fed by a spring that doesn’t always pump water uphill, so storage tanks like this keep the pressure steady using gravity feed.
The Stone Garage Waiting for a Second Life
Head back down to the ground floor and you’ll find the original garage, full of old farm tools and implements, with plastered stone walls and an archway that’s just begging to be exploited with glass doors.
This is also where the third bathroom lives, just a toilet at this point, but the sewer line is already there. The ceramic tile floor here is original, dating back to when this level was the oldest part of the house, roughly 60 years for the upper floors, older still for this stone base.
The ceiling height is generous enough to run plumbing for a kitchenette or full bathroom down the road. Labor in Sicily tends to run far cheaper than what most buyers are used to back home, which makes a project like this genuinely approachable.
The Sea View That Sells Casa Volanti
We say this a lot, but it’s worth repeating here. A sea view like the one from this rooftop is the kind of feature that just does not show up at this price point very often.
You get it while sipping coffee in the morning, you get it at sunset with a glass of wine, and you get it as a backdrop every single day you live here. It’s the detail that turns a practical, move-in ready house into a place people dream about.
Property Highlights of Casa Volanti
- Location, a piazzale in the historic center of Tusa, Sicily
- Interior size, 140 square meters (about 1,500 square feet) across three finished levels
- 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms
- Private ground floor garage with original stone walls and an archway
- Unfinished attic space of just under 20 square meters (about 215 square feet)
- Rooftop terrace of about 20 square meters (about 215 square feet) with a sea view over the centro storico
- Move-in ready condition, not a renovation project
- Custom hardwood double doors and mechanized aluminum shutters throughout
- Watch the full property tour
- Featured in Episode 90
- Asking price: €49,000
Please note: our property tours stay online long after filming, and homes like this tend to sell quickly, so this one may no longer be available. If it has already sold, we can still help you find something similar. Tell us your dream, and we’ll help make it real.
A Rare Move-In Ready Find in Tusa
Casa Volanti checks off nearly every box we hear from you in emails and comments, a roof terrace, a sea view, extra bedrooms, a garage, and a price under €50,000.
It’s move-in ready as it sits, but it also leaves real room to make it your own, whether that’s opening up the first floor walls or finishing out that stone garage into a proper living space.
Houses like this, sitting quietly in family hands for over a decade, rarely make it to any open market. That view from the roof terrace alone, looking out over the old stone rooftops of Tusa to the sea beyond, is the kind of thing that’s hard to put a price on.
If a firm €49,000 and a sea view terrace in Tusa sound like your kind of Sicilian dream, this one is worth a serious look.
