Blog 1 – “Piazza Cisterna”

23 Aug Blog 1 – “Piazza Cisterna”

“Piazza Cisterna” simply translates to square with a well or cistern square. The Cisterna is in San Giovanni in Valle in the city of Verona Italy. It was built in the middle of the fifteenth century and is surrounded by a dozen buildings believed to have been built at approximately the same time.

As I’m reading an email from our architect it strikes me as amusing, over 500 years ago the Veronese built the cisterna to bring water to the Monastery of Santa Chiara through a waterpipe. What I find comical is at this moment is our architect is telling us the contractor cannot hookup a new water line to our apartment because our neighbor is refusing to allow access through the driveway. I wonder what the Veronese would have done 500 years ago if a neighbor refused to allow the waterpipe through? Excommunication I am guessing, maybe worse!

However, our neighbor who owns the driveway is a lovely Italian lady, she has had us over for dinner and introduced us to a half a dozen of her friends. I certainly wouldn’t want any harm to happen to her, further I fully understand her frustration. Our building adjacent to the square is 3 stories high and was built sometime around the year 1550. She owns the apartment on the ground floor, we own the apartment on the top. The middle apartment has been going through a total gut renovation and the dust was so severe that her tenants had to move out. Now we are in the middle of a much smaller renovation and we’re sure she is at the end of her patience.

So, the question you may be asking yourself is how we came to find ourselves in the middle of a water war in Verona Italy, which is certainly a good question indeed! The main question we are asked is how and why we purchased an apartment in Italy. The answer to why is complicated and simple. The simplest answer is why not but of course it’s not that simple. If you have traveled to faraway places or even locations close to home, you may have experienced, as we have, that feeling about a town, “this would be a great place to live”. In almost every instance once you get home and go back to a normal routine the feeling wears off. Italy was different, it not only didn’t wear off but grew stronger the more we thought about it and intensified through the people we came to know with each visit.