ANIME A SUD – Casa Sabir – Syracuse, Sicily, Italy
A restored Liberty-era home overlooking Ortigia’s historic market, where Sicilian maiolica, contemporary design and the rituals of food become part of everyday life.
Why DNA Hotels Loves It
● Set inside a 1908 Liberty-style palazzo directly above Ortigia’s historic market, placing the sounds, smells and flavours of Syracuse quite literally beneath your windows.
● The restoration celebrates what was already there — original maiolica floors, traces of frescoes and historic architectural details — alongside concrete, glass, steel and contemporary furniture.
● Casa Sabir turns the relationship between food, architecture and Sicilian culture into the experience itself, with the market downstairs and a kitchen designed as the heart of the house.
Above the Market
Some hotels try very hard to connect you with local life. Casa Sabir simply opens the windows. Below is Ortigia’s historic market, where stalls fill with fish, fruit, vegetables, cheeses, herbs and all the other ingredients that make wandering through a Sicilian market one of the great pleasures of being in Sicily. Above it, on the first floor of a 1908 palazzo, is Casa Sabir. Part of the ANIME A SUD project, this isn’t a conventional hotel but an intimate home shaped by the same idea that defines its sister properties: take a historic Sicilian space, understand what makes it special, and add only what its next life requires.
Don’t Erase the Evidence
Casa Sabir’s restoration isn’t about returning the apartment to some imaginary moment of perfection. The layers are the point. Old hand-painted maiolica tiles meet polished concrete. Traces of colour uncovered during restoration remain visible on the walls. Historic doors and high ceilings coexist with steel, glass and sharply contemporary interventions. Rather than disguising the joins between periods, the design makes them part of the composition. A glass-fronted wine space incorporates antique ceramic flooring. Vintage and mid-century pieces sit beside bespoke furniture and modern lighting. Worn surfaces are allowed to show their age. The result feels sophisticated precisely because it hasn’t been polished into anonymity.
The Kitchen Is the Main Event
With one of Sicily’s most atmospheric food markets outside the door, putting the kitchen at the centre of Casa Sabir makes perfect sense. And this is no discreet holiday-apartment kitchenette. A substantial stainless-steel island turns cooking into a communal ritual, while tall windows connect the room to the life unfolding below. Go downstairs in the morning. See what’s arrived at the market. Buy tomatoes that actually smell like tomatoes, some local cheese, bread, olives and perhaps whatever came off the fishing boats that day. Then bring Sicily upstairs. Casa Sabir makes shopping, cooking and eating part of the architecture of the stay.
Maiolica, Steel and Mediterranean Light
The interiors are restrained, but never minimal for minimalism’s sake. Sicilian colour appears in fragments rather than themes: a section of patterned flooring, faded pigments, ceramics or textiles. Against these, steel, pale walls, natural materials and contemporary furniture provide a quieter backdrop. Mediterranean light does much of the decorating. It moves through the tall windows, across the old tiles and imperfect walls, changing the character of the apartment throughout the day. What looks almost austere in the morning becomes warm and theatrical towards evening.
Sleep Beneath the Past
The bedroom continues the same conversation. High ceilings and surviving decorative elements retain the grandeur of the original palazzo, while the furnishings remain deliberately simple. The bathroom takes a more tactile approach, bringing together traditional Sicilian stone and contemporary fittings rather than attempting to imitate a historic interior. Again, Casa Sabir doesn’t ask you to choose between heritage and modern design. You get both.
Ortigia Is the Other Room
The location is fundamental to understanding Casa Sabir. Ortigia is small enough to explore almost entirely on foot, and the apartment places you inside its everyday rhythm rather than at the edge of it. Walk from the market towards the Piazza del Duomo, stop for granita, disappear into narrow limestone lanes, swim from the rocks around the island or find somewhere for an aperitivo as the façades turn gold. Then return home rather than back to a hotel. That distinction matters here. There is no need for a restaurant downstairs or an elaborate hotel bar when one of Sicily’s most seductive little cities is waiting outside.
Why It Works
Casa Sabir understands something that many design-led restorations forget: imperfection carries information. The old tiles, faded colours and architectural scars tell you what this place was. The steel kitchen, contemporary furniture and new interventions tell you what it has become. Neither has been allowed to cancel out the other. But its greatest design feature may ultimately be something ANIME A SUD didn’t design at all — the Ortigia market beneath the windows. It gives Casa Sabir its soundtrack, its pantry and much of its personality. Go downstairs hungry.
