The young architect and broadcaster Charlie Luxton is feeling smug. There are few places greyer and chillier than London in February — but he and his wife, Kate, manager for an architectural salvage firm, are basking in Sicilian sunshine and Charlie is towelling off after a vigorous swim at the beach near their home.

The couple, who are expecting a baby this summer, are part of a group of trendsetting young Brits who have discovered a hot spot they reckon is “the next Tuscany”: an “uncorrupted” area around the baroque cities of Noto and Syracuse, in southeast Sicily.

The advent of direct flights to the city of Catania, an hour’s drive from Noto, has helped this stretch of the island, rich in ruins for renovation, become a property magnet for British buyers, who have snapped up houses for as little as £30,000 in recent years.

David Harber, a sundial maker from Oxfordshire, spent £40,000 on 13 acres of olive, lemon and almond groves and a farm building outside Noto which he plans to convert into a holiday home for his family of six.

He sums up the appeal: “It is a romantic corner of Europe. We have friends buying in the southeast corner of Spain and we find visiting them depressing. There are no package tours here, no tourist developments to cater for northern Europeans. You don’t pay through your nose for a cup of coffee like you do in St Tropez. It’s an exquisite, simple, local culture.”

But the biggest draw is the prices. The Luxtons paid just under £30,000 for a two-bedroom house in Noto a year ago and they have so far spent £25,000 gutting and redoing the interior: new bathrooms, floors, kitchen and roof. Their next task is to restore the honey-coloured stone balconies on the front of the house and paint the exterior a soft pinky colour.

When they visited this part of Sicily three years ago, they fell in love with it. Despite both working in London, they couldn’t find a property “with potential” for a price they could afford, so instead plumped for Noto.

How much would a house like this have cost in Tuscany? “Maybe five times more,” says Charlie.

“Noto is just three hours away but it feels like it’s on the edge of Europe. It’s a Unesco world heritage site so there can’t be any modern tourist development. Architecturally, it’s stunning, baroque buildings in a soft sandstone that glows under the Sicilian sun. The 17th-century cathedral is being renovated and everything is looking better and better.” And at Vendicari, 10 minutes away, there’s a five-mile long nature reserve with an untouched strip of beach.

“It’s the stuff of dreams,” says Charlie, whose next BBC television project, A House in Time, to be shown later this year, follows the fortunes of seven homeowners who are renovating their homes.

Local estate agents confirm that in the past few years English buyers have followed in the footsteps of the Germans and Italians, who have been buying property on Sicily for several years. Pop star Mick Hucknall produces wine, known by the locals as Simply Red, from an 18th-century estate on the slopes of Mount Etna — but most are just looking for a holiday home or a renovation project.

Luca Lo Presti, who runs the estate agency Immobiliare Ortigia in Syracuse, says he and fellow agents are in the grip of a property boom, with prices up 20% on a year ago. “You can buy big pieces of land with rural houses very cheaply. It is like Tuscany used to be, but the prices are much lower,” he says.

And few buyers are deterred by the word that pops into most people's minds when you say Sicily. Mention the mafia to Ayan Gorhan, who left Britain last year with her architect husband to set up the property search agency Sicilian Homes and she laughs. Gorhan says most of the mafia acitivity is associated with Palermo, the capital, in the northwest of the island.

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