As a number of reviewers have noted, this exceptional villa and property is even better than it appears in the listing. The house itself is a large, well-appointed historic home with great charm and character and is greatly enhanced by a beautiful pool and outdoor dining area, gardens, extensive surrounding citrus groves, and an upper terrace with spectacular views of the grounds, Mount Etna and the sea.
The property is secluded, quiet and peaceful and it would be tempting never to leave the grounds and just lounge by the pool and admire the surrounding views, with the impressive Etna dominating the landscape. But the port town of Riposto is nearby with its excellent seafood and produce markets (and better beaches than we had heard) and we found the location to be ideally situated for major day trips to Etna, Taormina, Siracusa and even the Aeolian Islands. And access to the Catania airport is very easy.

In addition to the extremely responsive, knowledgeable and thoughtful manager Oksana, the lovely, friendly owners live on the ground floor and are there to serve you an ample breakfast each morning and take care of your every need. We especially appreciated access to laundry after a week on the road, and the availability of beach towels. In short, this was the perfect spot for our special family vacation of 3 couples.
The only negative was that for most of our six-day stay (during a heat wave) we had only two double rooms with working air conditioning. We appreciated management’s efforts to fix the problem, but their inability to do so created a real hardship for some of our party. We would have expected some sort of accommodation, which management was unwilling to provide. Perhaps that is just the price one pays for the advantages that Airbnb offers over hotels.