Arpino, Frosinone, Lazio, Italy

Palazzo Palma is a striking property on the main Corso of Arpino, with courtyard, private garden, terrace, and private cinema.

Impressive gates open from the main corso of Arpino into a large private courtyard, behind which is the main house.

An entrance hall with painted ceiling opens to the left into the dining room and to the right into a sitting room or study. Beyond this is a small summer kitchen, for use when dining in the garden.
Behind the dining room is a large kitchen (with its own direct entrance to a side alley), and beyond that a large pantry room (also with its own direct alley entrance - it was originally a stable for donkeys, when they were the main form of transport within the narrow old streets).

Beyond the smaller sitting room/study and the summer kitchen is the larger sitting room, which has a large stone fireplace. Both it and the summer kitchen open directly into the walled garden, which has a vaulted stone portico running along one side, to provide shade in summer.

Also on the ground floor, there is a bathroom and two large 'cantina' or cellar rooms, one also opening directly into the walled garden.

At the end of the entrance hall marble and wrought iron stairs sweep up to the first floor.

On the first floor, there are three rooms along the front of the house, with painted ceilings, and a fourth smaller room. Two of these rooms open onto a balcony running along to join the large terrace over the cinema lobby building, and one has its own private balcony.

There is a further large sitting room, and beyond it another room, with a small laundry bathroom and another bathroom opening from it, as well as an attractive morning room or studio, with arched ceilings and another private terrace.

Beyond this, a corridor runs to the back door of the house, which owing to the slope of the land is one storey higher than the front door. To the right of this corridor is found the original kitchen, which still has its original terracotta floor tiles.

At one end of the courtyard, hiding the walled garden from the street, there is another building, which is the lobby of the old cinema. It has direct street access (in fact wide enough to drive a car into the lobby - the current owners use it as a garage), as well as lockable doors into the courtyard and garden. Stairs lead down past the old ticket office to an old cinema (now for complete restoration) with two levels of seating. This was, from 1912, a private theatre, and then subsequently a cinema. There are bathrooms and direct access to Arpino's public parking lot on this level (now two stories below the main house).

Separate stairs from the lobby lead down into the oldest part of the cellars, where there is also the projection room.

Energy classification: G


ARPINO AND THE CIOCIARIA

Arpino is one of the major medieval hilltop towns in the area of Italy called the Ciociaria, the name given to the fertile land that lies south of Rome but north of Naples, situated inland in the hills in the heart of Italy.

The Ciociaria region is within easy reach of both Rome and Naples and their respective airports. A day's shopping in Rome is a common pastime, while an even shorter drive brings you to the charming beaches south of Rome. Alternatively, drive east, and the mountains of the Abruzzo National Park await with horse trekking in the magnificent beech forests, and sparkling mountain lakes and rivers where you can swim in the heat of the summer. And at the other extreme of temperature, although Arpino itself is temperate, less than an hour's drive brings you to the winter ski slopes.

Often overlooked, both by tourists and by those foreigners in search of an Italian home, in favour of the more publicised regions of Tuscany and Umbria, the Ciociaria remains largely an unspoilt gem with beautiful scenery and medieval hilltop towns. A home or second home in the Ciociaria, in the hilltop towns of Arpino, Veroli, Alatri or in the rolling countryside that surrounds them, will afford you a setting where over two thousand years of history combine with an idyllic rural Italian lifestyle, where you can still discover the 'real' Italy and take time out from the busy crowds of the larger tourist cities, while being less than ninety minutes journey from central Rome or either of Rome's two airports.


VIA ROMANA Srls and CASE & CASALI REAL ESTATE AGENCY

Via Romana Srls is an Italian-incorporated company owned by a British/Australian Chartered Accountant and her photographer daughter, and offers a package of services to facilitate all aspects of the purchase and restoration of Italian property by overseas clients. The Via Romana team works in collaboration with various fully-licensed Italian real estate agencies including Case & Casali Real Estate Agency represented by Sig. Ciro Tomei. Sig. Tomei has been enrolled in the register of real estate agents at the Chamber of Commerce in Frosinone, Lazio since 2007 and has much experience in the international marketing of Italian real estate.