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~ The ongoing saga of turning a crumbling Italian ruin into a home

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Category Archives: Beginnings

Crazy Quilt Properties

08 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by Shelagh in Beginnings, Community

≈ 4 Comments

Everything from the wall out was Umberto's

One of the reasons so many lovely Italian ruins are rotting away has to do with the division of property amongst siblings when parents die. Frequently the structure is owned by many family members who can’t agree on whether to sell it, or for how much. In our case, the house, and the land on two sides of it, was owned by one person. But if you put your hand out the west windows you were in a neighbour’s airspace. Likewise a small blob of land against the north wall – the entrance to the property – belonged to someone else again.

In order to own all the land around the house, we had to cobble together three different real estate deals with three different sellers.

For Sale: house with (some) land

The map at left shows the deal; the green parcel came with the house (which is the dark green square in the middle). The pink bit was Umberto’s and the pale blue bit was Antonio’s. Since we’re used to the neat rectangles of Ontario’s seigneurial land system, we still have trouble figuring out exactly which trees are ours. But our neighbours know. They can’t understand why we find it so difficult.

One of the most interesting aspects of the land deal, given our North American ‘this land is mine and that land is yours’ perspective, was the yellow bit. It’s land held in common with Gino, who  happens to be the landlord of our apartment up the road. We have to get each other’s agreement when we want to do something with it, such as putting down gravel to make parking easier. I’ve discovered this doesn’t mean you always get to share costs. Gino can say yes to an improvement but declare it of no value to himself and decline to help pay. This could be treacherous, but I’ve noticed my neighbours have a pretty good fairness barometer. It’s part of their community balancing act, a continual tit for tat with each other.

Howdy, neighbour

In line with this balancing act, Umberto’s land was being kept clean by grazing cows, and after we bought the land we asked him to keep the animals there because they were the easiest way to keep the vegetation under control. They have since been replaced by another neighbour’s horse.

I like these bonds of community. I believe that every co-operative gesture on our part will come back to us, and so far it has. In Toronto, as a landscape designer, I frequently watch clients argue over 1 inch along a fence line. The people of Varese are also keenly aware of which piece of sod is theirs, and which half of the tree they own  – but between ownership and usage they apply practicality and communal good. You scratch my back, at some point I’ll scratch yours.

It may be a Catholic country, but they really get karma.

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The Long and Winding Road

26 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by Shelagh in Beginnings

≈ 1 Comment

Somewhere along the way, all that fantasizing about renovating an Italian villa started to get a little, well, addictive. Then we started wanting something harder and our craving led us to actually looking at ‘for sale’ houses with a real, live agent.

Even that might have remained a kind of     souped-up form of entertainment had she not taken us one day down a rumpled laneway near Scurtabo, in Liguria…It was a classic, tree-canopied lane, with dappled sunlight on rutted ridges winding tantalizing out of sight. Right off the bat it felt magic. The lane led down a slight slope and past a rushing creek; after the bend, it opened up to a small hay field and continued to an old stone shed with roses, hydrangea and rosemary in wild profusion alongside. Beyond that, a large, handsome cherry tree, crazed, unkempt shrubberies, and The House: a great, three-storey lump of semi crumbling stone engulfed by ivy.

The building was not a thing of great beauty.

The deal clincher, believe it or not

However – at the front door was a stone terrace. And off that terrace was a view of the entire valley: vast, pristine, and breathtaking. The house sat on the furthest most point of a promontory, the last structure before the land tumbles down towards the valley below. Every room in the house has a piece of that stupendous view, a breath of its pure air, the music of its silence.

It was place more than structure that made us fall in love. The Italians have an expression for it: colpo di fulmine – a lightening blow to the heart. It was unequivocal; the house was ours before we ever signed a thing.

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Is it Crazy to Love Italian Ruins?

16 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by Shelagh in Beginnings

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

italy, renovation, villas

Our love affair with Italian housing started off, innocently enough, as a family obsession with the thousands of beautiful, ivy-covered stone ruins that are scattered across the countryside there, the way strip malls are scattered across Ontario. It’s almost impossible to drive anywhere in Italy without coming across some fantastic, abandoned farmhouse straight out of central casting for Romantic Italian Movies.

Some renovation required

When we lived in Italy, our road trips took twice as long as they should have because we kept stopping every time we saw a place we liked. Road-side admiration wasn’t enough, either. Shamelessly, we’d all pile out of the car and wander over the property as though we owned the place, then through the ruined house (testing the floorboards to make sure we weren’t going to fall through), wiping cobwebs off battered stairs, peeking behind half-closed doors. The detris of abandonment was often peculiar. Among rotted armoirs and fallen walls we’ve found mouse-infested mattresses, a crumpled jacket in a corner, a pair of boots by the door as though the last person to leave had actually intended to return. None of this bothered us. We’d redesign the places in our imaginations, argue about it as though it were real, then be on our way again.

These weren’t properties that were for sale, mind. It was pure fantasy, so actual availability never entered into it. It was entertainment without intent, like checking out babes or hunks on the subway. Little did we understand what looking can lead to.

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