The view from the terrace is breathtaking. On the left, the ancient Greek ruins of Solunto; on the right, the splendid Arab-Norman city of Cefalù. In the centre, a crystalline sea as blue as the sky.

For twenty years, Sicily’s most powerful mafia bosses plotted the murders of countless policemen and politicians from this spot, part of a 400 sq metre villa in the coastal resort town of Casteldaccia, known as the Miami of Sicilian mobsters, a few kilometres from Palermo.

But the godfathers are now gone and in their place is Gianluca Calì, an anti-mafia businessman who is about to turn their former stronghold into a holiday house.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The entrepreneur Gianluca Calì, photographed in the small private harbour of his villa – previously owned by the former mafia boss Michele Greco, and now turned into a holiday house. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

The villa, hidden among low walls and vegetation, has been vacant for almost 25 years, despite investigators’ suspicions that the premises may have continued to serve as a drugs and weapons deposit or a hiding place for kidnapping victims. The estate even has its own dock; a luxury reserved for a tiny minority of the island’s inhabitants. Mafia bosses could freely dock their boats a few metres from the villa, or make an easy escape in case of a police raid.

Work is currently underway. In a few weeks, the villa will be equipped to receive up to 32 guests among its 24 rooms. The mafia is still remembered, but with a twist – in the living room hangs an iconic anti-mafia photo of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the two magistrates killed in 1992 after their investigation of the Sicilian mafia, known colloquially as Cosa Nostra (our thing), led to the arrest of hundreds of mobsters.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gianluca Calì holds the photo of the judges Falcone and Borsellino, killed by the mafia in Palermo in 1992. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

Calì, 46, knows the mafia too. The owner of a car dealership, he can count the number of vehicles he has had torched in the last 9 years. “Around ten,” he says, smiling nervously.

His problems began at the end of 2010, a few months before the purchase of the villa, when a successful year of used car sales did not go unnoticed in Casteldaccia. “Two members of the local mafia family came to our office and told my brother that they needed cash to pay for the clan’s legal expenses. It was a request for protection money. We refused and shortly thereafter they torched the first car.”

Calì reported the incident to the police and decided to invest part of his profits in a villa on the coast of Casteldaccia that was going up for auction.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The BMW X5 of Gianluca Calì, burned in a mafia attack in November 2015, is today parked at the Calì’s car dealership as an anti-mafia memorial. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

He had no idea that the previous owner had been Michele “The Pope” Greco, the boss of bosses of Cosa Nostra and, for several years, the head of a group of leading mobsters called the Sicilian Mafia Commission.

Greco had purchased the land in 1965 and built his summer residence there two years later. He hadn’t chosen the site by chance. Next door lived the boss Pietro Vernengo, AKA “Bazooka Eyes”, a multiple murderer who had dissolved some of his victims in acid. Fifty metres away lived Stefano Bontade, one of the most powerful Sicilian mafia bosses, later gunned down on his birthday in 1981.

Greco used to hold summit meetings of the Sicilian Mafia Commission in the villa, planning some of the most infamous murders in Italian history. The killing of Pio La Torre, an Italian communist party leader who proposed a law making Mafia association a crime, was ordered on the terrace. The murder of General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, sent as prefect to Sicily to combat the mafia, was commissioned by the bosses while relaxing in the living room the same year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aerial view over the coast of Altavilla Milicia, about 20km from Palermo. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

But by the time Calì realised that the villa, acquired for the low price of €240,000, had belonged to “The Pope”, it was too late.

“The police informed me that if I had turned back, leaving the villa in the hands of Greco’s heirs, I could have been accused of abetting the mafia.

“His heirs came to visit me a few days later, in 2010, to tell me it would be better if I got out of the way. It was a blatant threat. That’s when something clicked. I had already been through the first arson attacks for refusing to pay protection money, but I was determined not to let them win. I then decided to transform the villa into an anti-mafia museum and a vacation home for tourists.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The villa, seen from the air. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

Calì, moved to Milan in the meantime and says he lost count of the threats. In 2014, a local mafia boss, now a police informant, stated that he had decided to shoot Calì with a .45 calibre pistol that year. Fortunately the police arrested him a few days later.

Calì sleeps with a gun under his pillow and drives an armoured car, but he says he has not given up. His extortionist, the mafia boss Antonino Virruso, was sentenced to 11 years in prison last September. A sign on the villa gate reads: “In the house, the Mafia has lost”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gianluca Calì’s assistant inside one of the rooms of the villa. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

If you ask him whether the guests will be safe spending the night there, after the hardships suffered by himself and his family, Calì points to the dozens of security cameras. “The only time someone tried to break in, in 2014, an arrest was made the following day.

“There is also law enforcement, who patrol this area and protect me and my customers. The mafia and the Grecos shouldn’t frighten anyone,” he adds.

Michele Greco was arrested in 1986. He joined hundreds of other defendants in a large anti-mafia trial that lasted six years and became known as the Maxi-Trial. Greco was charged with ordering 78 murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison in 2008, two years before Calì bought the villa.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gianluca Calì photographed inside his villa, previously owned by former mafia boss Michele Greco and now turned into a holiday house. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

The men who orchestrated his downfall are the same two depicted in the photo now hanging inside.

“I could care less what Greco must be thinking from hell about what has become of his villa,” says Calì. “But I’m confident that, from heaven, Falcone and Borsellino, just like in that photo, are doubled over in laughter.”