Thursday 27 June 2013

First sight

The cielo terra




The Bedroom
The Terrazzo
The Living Room cum Kitchen
The Cantina and downstairs kitchen

We had looked at a few apartments and small houses in Acquasparta to buy and had arranged for the Real Estate agent to bring a builder to help us assess the structural integrity of the places, and assess how much it would cost to bring them to a state in which we could comfortably live.

It turned out that the builder, was in fact, a Geometra,  a kind of surveying professional.  We studied some of the places in the centro storico, mostly built in the 17th Century.  There was one new place we hadn't yet seen that he tagged along to help assess with us in Configni, an old village near the town. When we first saw it, something clicked.  Maurizio, the Geometra, confirmed that the cielo terra, literally sky earth, an Italian apartment which has no one living either above or below, was sound.  It hadn't been inhabited for a long time and was a jumble of religious and family artifacts on the walls, old calendars, and plastic wrapped furniture.

However, something about it gelled; a brick walled area outside the front door on the upper level caught cooling summer breezes, and a lovely aspect.