This impressive Marbella villa (Costa del Sol, Spain) is currently available for purchase. Classic timeless elegance is refined to perfection in this Sierra Blanca estate. Situated in the most exclusive residential community in Marbella, just a few minutes drive from the town centre and the beach, this property set on a unique large plot of 4200 m2 and surrounded by magnificent park-like gardens offers fantastic views from all levels. A gracious driveway leads to the spacious home with its impressive entrance. The reception rooms with two fantastic fireplaces, dining-room and bar offer great sea views and are perfect for grand entertaining. The ground floor also comprises of a large kitchen with sitting-area and a bedroom suite. The upper floor offers 3 exceptional large suites, each with cozy sitting rooms, fireplace and access to the terrace. The professional cinema room, gym, sauna and bodega are all situated on the lower level. The gardens boast mature fruit trees, ponds with water fall and a fantastic swimming pool with barbecue area. A unique elegant estate in a prime location.
For more information please contact our office in Marbella Golden Mile.

For more information, please contact our Marbella East Office.

E-mail: marbellaeast@hansa-realty.com

This exclusive high quality villa is situated in the most sought-after residential area of El Paraíso on the so-called New Golden Mile in Estepona, just a few minutes’ drive from the beach. The house was built in 2003 with an eye for detail. The representative entrance hall leads towards the housing space consisting of a beautiful living-room with fireplace, separate dining-room and a fully fitted kitchen with breakfast area and laundry room. Furthermore there are 3 bedroom suites on the top level and another suite and an office on the ground level. The basement offers a self-contained one bedroom guest apartment with fully fitted kitchen and bathroom and a games room, gym, wine cellar and a 3-car-garage. The main house has several well-sized terraces on both levels and is surrounded by a private access road, a courtyard and a beautiful tropical garden with Jacuzzi and a fantastic pool and barbecue area. The pool house has a fully fitted kitchen and a WC with shower.

Still there are many differences between these two villas that make it impossible to compare them to one another: One of the villas stands out for its contemporary South-East Asian design, while its open plan architecture and its
huge windows provide a bright and spacious home. The other one is a classic estate with an elegant interior, set on a plot of 4200 square meters which is not easy to find in this area.

Finally there is one important detail that both properties have in common and that makes them even more interesting: They are both for sale. So seize the opportunity.

This impressive villa is situated in the exclusive residential area of Marbella Club Golf Resort, (Costa del Sol, Andalucía, Spain) in the mountains above the Golden Mile and close to Benahavis that is famous for its restaurants, known as the culinary heart of South Spain.

The villa has superior quality finishes and materials. There are a representative entrance hall, 5 bedroom suites, a bright and spacious fully fitted kitchen with breakfast area, a living-room and a separate dining-room, a TV room, a games room and an office. Several fireplaces and the exposed wood beams ceilings lend a comfortable ambience to the home.

The upper terrace is partly covered and offers breathtaking views of the beautiful landscape and partly sea views. The lower terrace is covered and has an inviting barbecue area.

The basement contains a wine cellar, a self-contained staff or guest apartment and a 3 car garage. The house is surrounded by a large courtyard and a manicured garden with a private pool.

This property makes an ideal family home for golf and country lovers.

For more information and request, please contact our Marbella Office.

Designed to an exceptionally high standard with grand style entrances and courtyards, this property is ideal for entertaining and year round living. The plot benefits from being in a mature pinewood, which has been used as a feature of the magnificently landscaped gardens which include a private pavilion overlooking the immaculate Almenara Golf course.

Accommodation consists of a double volume entrance hall leading to formal salon, formal dining room with direct access to a large covered porch.

A fully fitted Bulthaup kitchen with integrated dining and family room opening out to a terrace complete with lily pond and fountains.

There are 3 double en suite bedrooms on the ground floor and 2 on the first floor including a fantastic Master bedroom suite with large dressing room and spacious bathroom.

In addition there is an independently accessed cottage off the main entrance patio complete with en suite double bedroom and sitting room currently used as an office.

Features include a classic mix of modern and antique materials in a Vintage Syle, beautifully appointed antique fountains, authentic antique doors detailed patio designs all of which have been used to make this an elegant modern style family home. Under floor heating, air-conditioning throughout, heated indoor swimming pool with Spa, gym opening onto gardens, large decked terrace and infinity pool with spectacular view to the golf course.

For more information about this marvelous villa for sale,Reference 3000050, please contact our Sotogrande sales office.

E-mail: sotogrande@hansa-realty.com

We would like to recommend you this penthouse in the beautiful area of La Mairena, east of Marbella, situated in the mountains. The high position of this place gives the apartment a great view over the mountains, the coast and Elviria. The south-east orientation guarantees lots of sunshine all day, but especially the sunsets here are simply unbeatable experiences.

The apartment complex has been designed emulating the white Andalusian villages, with terraces and balconies on different levels and wooden pergolas and gardens with native plants that make the complex fit perfectly into the surroundings. The penthouse apartment itself is elegant and perfectly suited for a luxury holiday.

The penthouse with two bedrooms and two bathrooms is very well priced due to the current market situation. So it is a great opportunity to buy a spectacular home and it’s only a ten minutes drive to Marbella city centre, Elviria and the beautiful “Pearl White Beach”.

For further information please contact Bernd Dellwig from our Elviria office. Tel. +34 952 850 250

E-mail: marbellaeast@hansa-realty.com

Here another oportunity to buy a great apartment in La Mairena:

All throughout my visit the gentle Budha gazed upon me with serenity. The warmest materials and colors from various exotic countries mix and flow easily welcoming you into this peaceful environment the owners created. You feel at home instantly a stone throw away to the San Pedro Beach Paseo. Quite a delicious experience.

This spacious villa is situated in a very quiet residential area on the beach side of San Pedro and in walking distance of the beach. The tastefully decorated villa comprises of six bedrooms, five bathrooms, a staff accommodation, a fully fitted kitchen with high quality appliances, a separate dining-room and a spacious open plan living-area. The housing-space features marble floors and there is wooden flooring in the bedrooms. The south-facing terraces both offer magnificent mountain views and the upper terrace has partly sea views. The house is surrounded by a beautiful well-kept garden with a nice pool.

By Corinne Villette

For more information contact: marbella@hansa-realty.com

They have reduced the price from 1.550.000 Euros to now 1.150.000 Euros, what is a spectacular price for this high quality home.

The plot is about 1.618 sqm and the villa has a build area of 570 sqm, with best building quality. The house is constructed in an elegant Andalusian-style. The entrance portal has massive wooden doors that lead into a typical Andalusian courtyard. There are three bedrooms en suite with access to the patio and the garden. A master suite is in the second floor with dressing room and terrace with undisturbed views to the San Roque Golf course. The garden includes a swimming pool and several terraces to give independency to the residents. The house and garden are in top shape and ready to welcome the new owner.

The price reduction will be valid until June. If you are interested in a visiting it please contact our Sotogrande office at sotogrande@hansa-realty.com or give us a call at tel 956 790 290.

Take one talented architect, two visionary interior designers and three hectares of rural paradise in a Nature Reserve so privileged it can never be further developed and you have the foundations for a dream home, reports Belinda Beckett.

Cavatina is one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music ever written and The Deer Hunter theme could have been composed specifically for this stunning country estate in the rolling hills of Ojén, where wild deer are never far away. The architecture is harmony personified.

The location is music for the soul. And, when the afternoon light streams through the French windows of the library, it falls on the very architect’s table at which this evocative guitar piece was penned, by the owner’s husband.

Like his music, this classical Palladian-style mansion cradled between the Mediterranean and the Serranía de Ronda is a work to make the spirit soar.

Indeed, that was the owner’s intention when her husband died and she decided to make a new life in Spain. Her mission was to build a gracious new home that would appropriately accommodate the treasured possessions she has collected over the last 40 years from the four corners of the world; no small consideration since her huge London loft apartment (where the drawing room alone boasted a 5.5 metre ballroom ceiling) was filled with antiquities and objets d’art on a grand scale. In fact, everything in the property was brought over from London, excluding two of the beds, and the owner knows the history of every piece.

It may be an old-fashioned idea (since many home owners moving out here tend to buy new, often from just one décor shop) but it works, creating a look that is individual and quirky rather than sterile and artificial, like a furniture showroom.

An interior designer herself, she had a long-time close friend in Hugh Henry of the prestigious London design company, Mlinaric, Henry & Zervudachi, whose award-winning work can be seen in private villas, apartments and mansions all over the world. Henry had worked with her on four properties, including her last home, so it seemed natural to collaborate once more, especially as she shared his philosophy that a project should be dictated not only by the client’s desires but also by the culture and topography of the region, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all aesthetic.

Thus, when she found her perfect plot in the hills above Elviria, she already knew exactly how it had to be: of an architectural design that would bring the outside in, with interiors designed to complement the exterior, thereby achieving a oneness with nature. To make sure, she took pictures of the plot from all angles, including every tree in what was a veritable cork oak forest – the beginning of a labour of love that she has recorded for posterity in a photograph album tracking every phase of the build. Incredibly, it was completed in just 10 months.

That was 10 years ago and it’s fascinating, today, to look at those photographs and see what transformation has been wrought, with nature’s assistance. Where once there was dry, untended scrubland, lush greenery has sprouted while the gracious property itself looks as if it might always have been here. Also, just as the owner had planned, the muted interiors in natural pastels of powder blue, sand, sage and soft aquamarine emulating the colours of the earth, sea and sky, merge seamlessly into the sylvan scene outside.

Endless mature gardens preserve almost all of the land’s original centenary cork oaks so that it’s hard to know where the estate finishes and the wild campo begins. Paths, illuminated at night, meander through carpets of pungent rosemary and lavender, oleander hedges and orchards planted with peach, pear, lemon, cherry, fig, mandarin and almond trees whose delicate blossoms stipple the woodland in springtime like an impressionist painting. And then there are the 360 degree views.

From an enchanting wisteria-woven pergola on the cobbled front terrace of the main house, overlooking a formal rose garden, the whole coastal panorama is laid out like an aerial map, stretching from Benalmádena to Gibraltar, affording glimpses of the Sierra Nevada and across the Straits to the peaks of Africa’s Rif mountains. On the other side of the house, the extnesive gardens run down to a secluded pool built on a plateau where tall cypresses stand sentinel and the encircling granite sierras form an awe-inspiring backdrop.

Nearby is a kitchen garden which, together with the fruit trees, kept the larder full all summer long. The owner, who was only a tub gardener before (her London apartment had a roof garden) did all the landscaping (a super-human task), learning from books as she went along. In another secluded part of the estate, there is another surprise: a second three-bedroom villa (with 350m2 of living space, its own pool and entrance drive, plus underfloor heating, it could never be called a guest apartment), perfect as a family home or for letting. And there is still more land beyond the garden proper, part of it grazed by goats, which would be ideal for keeping horses.

For the principal four-bedroom property, which totals 759m2 in built area and terraces, all on one floor, the owner wanted a year-round home, comfortable and warm in winter, cool and airy in summer. Henry’s idea for a cruciform floor plan, with a hall running the length of the house crossed in the centre by another, was inspired. There are tall French windows at every turn and, when standing at the centre where the two halls converge, you can see trees and sky at all four points of the compass. Where they meet, a roof tower rises up, set with circular windows on four sides that allow light to stream in. Thus, sunshine is thrown back from the off-white walls to illuminate even the very heart of the house. This clever layout allowed the owner to locate all the entertainment rooms at the front of the house, with two guest rooms at the back. The master suite, with its separate bathroom and dressing room, occupies the west wing; the kitchen, pantry and dining room are found across the hall in the east wing.

Built before noble materials were readily available on the coast, the natural sandstone used for the hall floor was imported from France while the owner travelled to Madrid for many items, including the door handles. Way ahead of the trend for wood floors, all the other rooms are laid with pine and covered with exquisite wool rugs hand-woven in China to ancient patterns. Contributing to the noble look of the house, all the ceilings are at least ??? metres high. As well as central heating, there are fireplaces in four of the rooms. These were hand-made on site and came as cast iron units around which the brick chimneys were built, comprising a hood which can be opened to let smoke out, or closed against draughts when not in use. In the formal dining room, the walls are covered in blue Chinese silk-on-paper panelling with a bird motif, hand-reproduced from a classic design, the pattern never repeated. The wood-framed French windows are sound-proofed and fitted with mosquito netting so they can be thrown wide in summer to create a cooling through-breeze. The furnishings reference many periods and styles yet nothing screams or jars and above all, the decor is understated, exuding elegance and class. At the same time, the clean and angular architectural lines would make this property equally suitable for a totally contemporary décor treatment.

After her Olympic-sized drawing room in London, the living room is of cosier dimensions yet still elegant, with French 18th century chairs upholstered in cream faux suede, a pair of antique gilt mirrors on either side of the fireplace and a magnificent crystal chandelier hanging from the Portuguese-style white wood ceiling. Across the hall, the library is lined with hand-made wooden bookcases topped with classical marble busts. But this is also a forerunner of today’s must-have home cinema, with a flat screen TV and a massive archive of films in all languages, on video and DVD, some so rare that Hollywood movie directors who can’t get hold of a copy ring the owner to borrow hers!

Although the trend for huge family-sized kitchens makes this house’s culinary engine room looks compact, louvre-doored cupboards and recesses concealed in the worktops reveal every modern convenience, from a chip pan and barbecue grill to a dish washer and an American fridge freezer. However, the adjacent utility room is only separated by a partition wall which could be opened up and joined to what is currently a serving area, lined with store cupboards, to create a much larger kitchen. However, with the current layout, finished in rustic country style, everything is easily to hand. Next to this is the formal dining room with three French windows features leading out onto south- and east-facing terraces which catch the morning sun – perfect for breakfasting outdoors in summer. Side tables around the room, one antique and two which the owner had made to match, look ripe for holding silver chafing dishes filled with kedgeree and scrambled eggs for a classic breakfast, country manor house-style! Flying cast iron lizards on the wall above the fireplace are a tasteful take on flying ducks; there are ducks too, also in cast iron and of an exquisite Japanese design. Throughout the house there are also framed, text book-style diagrams of insects and fossils and other subjects that fall into the category of nature study, one of the owner’s interests.

Across the hall in the opposite wing, the master bedroom and bathroom are separated by a spacious dressing room whose built-in wardrobes are made of cedar wood, which is known to repel moths and mosquitoes. In all the suites, the bathrooms are purity personified, simply designed with white fittings and hand-made Portuguese tiles in white and powder blue.

The spacious master bathroom also boasts a sunken bath and a show-stopping walk-in shower with a glass door to showcase its sumptuous finish in white and grey Italian marble. What looks like an abstract monochrome painting on the wall is in fact an original Jean Cocteau scarf, framed because it was just too good to wear.

From the window in the curtained-off w.c./bidet area, views of the Ronda mountains make stirring contemplation! Imposing beds are another feature, both in the guest suites and the master bedroom where the iron four-poster frame fashioned in a period French style can be hung with curtains to give the room a more feminine look.

If all this is not enough, with this house you also get a superb staff apartment with its own sitting room as well as kitchen, bathroom and bedroom; and, last but not least, the delightful second villa whose beautiful lounge, with windows on four sides, is a bowl of light, the whole surrounded by wrap-around terraces commanding equally spectacular views.

Being built on land which has since been designated a UNESCO Nature Reserve, the future occupant really will own something exclusive as no further houses can be built here, although existing property may be extended, providing unlimited potential.

The estate is available for sale through Hansa Reality, Contact Alexander von Albert, Tel: 952 850 250/ 696 299 128/ alexander.vonalbert@hansa-realty.com

Report Belinda Beckett for the Essential Magazine, Photography KH Photography & Hansa Realty