Picture Woody Allen arriving at Lake Como: thick glasses, hands in his pockets, wearing that familiar expression somewhere between anxious and bewildered. He’s not here looking for inspiration for a new film (it is easy to imagine Diane Keaton shouting from a lakefront terrace), but for a villa. A real Lake Como villa. Quiet, elegant, and most importantly, with all the paperwork in order. Because before he can pop open a bottle of Barolo and toast to his new Italian address, our hero must face the true nightmare of every New York intellectual: Italian bureaucracy. And no, quoting Freud won’t get him out of this one.
- House-Hunting with the Real-Estate Agent
Woody calls a local real-estate agency. Sure, browsing online is convenient, but when the choice is between “lake view” and “parking lot view,” it’s better to rely on someone who knows the difference between a boathouse and a garden shed. The agent takes him to see luxurious villas, with dreamlike gardens and family sagas worthy of a Moravia novel. At this point, an interpreter is a must, not just any interpreter, but someone who gets Woody’s dry humour and doesn’t turn it into Norse bureaucratese.
Documents to translate: property brochures, real-estate descriptions, technical specifications, and preliminary contracts (yes, the ones Italians call compromessi—which, despite the name, have nothing to do with love.
- The Mortgage Question: Woody Goes to the Bank
Not all celebrities pay cash, even if Hollywood has led us to believe otherwise. Woody prefers to play it safe: better talk to the bank. So he walks into a branch, crooked tie, a folder full of papers, and a look that says he’s either asking for a loan or confessing to funding a minor coup. They ask for: bank statements, tax returns (W-2, 1040, 1120-S), pay stubs (if he ever had a boss, which is doubtful), a marriage certificate (!) and, of course, the inevitable “privacy form” that no one reads but everyone signs, because the alternative is sleeping in your car.
Documents to translate: mortgage agreement, banking documents, and every single page that might conceal a vexatious clause (a favourite term among Italian notaries).
- The Deed Signing with the Notary: A Bilingual Performance
And now for the final act, both in the theatrical and legal sense. In Italy, you can’t buy a house without going through a Notary. But beware: the Italian Notary is not the European cousin of the American one who just stamps signatures between a coffee break and a cigarette. No, this is a public official, a central and impartial figure who checks every document, verifies the legality of the transaction, confirms everyone’s identity, and reads the deed with the solemnity of a church mass, while Woody starts sweating like he’s on trial for emotional fraud.
He’s terrified, as the notary reads every word of the deed at the same speed as the opening credits of one of his films.
Luckily, the deed is bilingual: Italian-English. But just to be sure, Woody double-checks that rogito, the legal conveyance, doesn’t mean expropriation and that ‘closing’ doesn’t imply jail time.
The notary asks questions, the interpreter translates, Woody sighs. It’s done: the villa is his. Or rather, it will be after a long series of signatures (because yes, Woody assumed there was just one signature page).
After the nerve-racking process, he thinks he can walk out with the keys and the contract in hand, but alas, this is Italy…
Documents to translate: notarial deed of sale, floor plans, and the infamous Urban Planning Certificate, (Certificato di Destinazione Urbanistica), not an astrological forecast, though it comes close.
- The Energy Performance Certificate – Is the House Eco-Friendly?
Now we enter the realm of energy efficiency. No villa is truly “green” without its APE (Attestato di Prestazione Energetica). A document that tells you whether the property’s systems consume like a Tesla, or a parked Boeing 747.
Woody reads the document and asks: “If the house is rated G, does that mean G for ‘Good’ or ‘Good luck with the heating bills’?”
Spoiler: it’s the second one.
Document to translate: the APE – essential to avoid living in a fridge in December and an oven in July.
Woody doesn’t speak Italian. And Italy, charming as it may be, speaks a language of its own, especially when it comes to notarial deeds, land registry constraints, and urban planning certificates. To survive, you need an interpreter who not only translates but anticipates anxious sighs and whispered jokes. Every word must be translated. Every signature understood. Every “paragraph 3 of article 28” meticulously decoded.
Moral of the Story
Buying a villa on Lake Como isn’t just about style or scenery. It’s an existential journey through contracts, zoning plans, and bankers with impeccable Italian. For someone like Woody Allen, used to scripts, this may be the longest and least romantic screenplay of his career. His worries are far from over: at this point, a splitting headache kicks in and he immediately phones his confidante: “What if the previous owner didn’t pay the condo fees? What if the Heritage Office blocks my renovation because of that giant boulder I want to move, which gives me a panic attack every time I open the curtains?”. Yes, because the villa is protected. It’s been there since before Italian unification and might be classified as a “landscape-sensitive element,” which, in bureaucratic terms, means: don’t touch it, don’t look at it funny, don’t even dream about it. Woody, who just wanted to build a little veranda where he could play the clarinet at sunset, learns that even the tiniest modification requires heritage approval, a report from the local Superintendency, and a letter signed by an architect registered since at least the De Gasperi administration. And what on earth is this so-called “110 Superbonus”?
So, to all of you thinking of buying a house in Italy or abroad, Woody Allen has one piece of advice: “Before you dream about an infinity pool, get that preliminary contract translated!”
