Junefinnigan's Weblog

I sometimes feel like Italy is having one giant laugh at my expense, and the only thing I can do is laugh along.

Four weeks ago we discovered, quite by accident, that the planning permission we achieved last July doesn’t actually give us permission to do any work to our house. What we need for that is a ‘Permesso di Costruire’ (Permission to Build).

We probably should have known about this, but we asked our Geometra over and over again if there was anything else we needed to do before starting work and he never once mentioned it.

At the same time, we also unearthed a letter that the Comune (town hall) sent to our Geometra last summer. It contained a long list of things he needed to provide before we could get this Permesso di Costruire. He hadn’t provided any of them. Which I guess may explain his reluctance to…