The view from the vine-covered terrace draws the eye across the valley to the ancient hilltop town of Arpino, a place of refinement and distinction since it was the home town of Cicero, the Roman orator. Reaching up to grab a handful of blushingly ripe grapes — of the Italian variety that tastes of strawberries — the seeker after property bargains could be forgiven for drawing the obvious analogy: low-hanging fruit.
There for the taking, at prices not seen in Tuscany and Umbria in this century, are the village houses, town flats and country olive mills of the Ciociaria. The terrace of the low-hanging fruit, for example, belongs to an old cotton factory and its half-dozen outbuildings, which is on the market at £130,000. Even after a through renovation, for less than £500,000 you will have a small apartment complex, a boutique hotel or a fabulous one-off holiday home — isolated in its large garden but within walking distance of a decent cappuccino on Arpino’s main piazza.
As a rule, though, you would be hard-pressed to spend that amount in Ciociaria. The area, to the south of Rome, is only just beginning to register on the radar of the British property seeker, and prices are still low compared to Italy’s better known regions. Yet it has historic hilltop towns, medieval villages and, once you get beyond the unregulated buildings littering the more accessible valleys, enclaves of breathtaking natural beauty edging up into the woods and mountains of the Abruzzo national park.
It is the area’s very proximity to Rome, reckons Elide Hodgson from Hampstead Garden Suburb in north London, that has, paradoxically, kept it off the beaten property track. “My theory is that when people think of this area they think only of Rome,” she says. It takes her about an hour to drive from the city’s Ciampino airport to her holiday home in Veroli, another Ciociaria hilltop town, that she bought two years ago. Two floors of a medieval palazzo in the oldest part of town cost her €72,000 (£50,000). With the help of a £40,000 budget and a local architect, Vincenzo Martelluzzi, who says he “transformed it massively, respecting its history”, it is now a stylish three-bed flat.
Then a year ago she paid £40,000 for a ruined stone house with a large garden and went on to buy another sliver of house next door for £12,000. Martelluzzi has presented the plans for conversion to a three-bed house with terrace and swimming pool to the town hall.
It might not stop there. We explore up and down the well-kept narrow, stepped streets, where the locals decorate their doorways with exuberant tubs of flowers or bottles of water to deter stray cats. They flee, apparently, at the sight of their own reflections. Gianni Roscioli of local agent Tecnocasa shows us a ruined house on the edge of a pretty piazza at the top of the town: price, £20,000. Hodgson develops a speculative gleam in her eye, and asks the agent to make the owners an offer a bit below the asking price. She feels prices won’t stay low for long.
Martelluzzi agrees. When asked about local prices he makes one of those eloquent modulating hand gestures that in mere words translates as “good — at the moment. The area is still undiscovered but not isolated.”
On Roscioli’s books are a completely restored two-bedroom house in the historic centre of Arpino for £60,800, a handsome high-ceilinged flat for £50,650, and country wrecks to restore at £29,000, £37,000 and £50,650.
Francesca Drake from Belsize Park in north London, with her husband Jeff, a shipping company executive, has just paid £100,000 for an old frantoia, or olive mill, on 3,000sq m (32,000sq ft) of land in a valley near the medieval hilltop village of Boville Ernica. She reckons they will spend the same again to turn the three-storey stone building into 300sq m of living space with a swimming pool.
“We were looking in Italy but we were priced out of Tuscany and Umbria,” she says. “And we also thought Umbria was impractical to get to. But we weren’t 100% sold on Ciociaria as it’s quite a poor area and it’s not virgin unspoilt, but the people really sold it. They are so warm and friendly and helpful.”
And, as Roscioli points out, the area has mare (sea) as well as mountains. The beaches and seaside towns of the Mediterranean coast are less than an hour away.
An excursion with Alfonso and Luciana di Pucchio, antique dealer and pharmacist, shows just how unspoilt Ciociaria can be. Heading away from their home town of Sora — through which flows the “green Liri”, immortalised by Dante — we head up to the village of Pescosolido, built on a massive rock 600m above sea level with a commanding view of the valley. Just outside the village, in a large garden, is Luciana’s parents’ old house, a four-bedroom 1980s villa, which they have put on the market for £170,000. We pass a dilapidated stone farmhouse, in its own olive groves, on sale for £85,000.
Posta Fibreno is a quiet village on the shore of Lake Fibreno, a spring-fed lake with a “floating island” which moves with the wind. The lake’s water is of astoundingly crystalline clarity, as transparent as a swimming pool. The village, too, says Alfonso, is “almost uncontaminated” by nasty modern building, remaining “more or less as it was 50 years ago”.
We head to the Comino Valley, ringed by villages preserved in their antique splendour by the fact that so many people moved away to find work — Charles, later Lord, Forte, left Casalattico to seek his fortune in Britain.
In Alvito, two houses with spectacular views are for sale, but the phone number on the notice is out of service. In Belmonte Castello, with its well-restored central piazza and ruined castle, Tecnocasa has one house on its books: 230sq m of living space for £67,500. There is not exactly a rush to whip up a new market for these unique old homes.
“People round here often don’t even try to sell, because they think nobody wants to buy,” says Alfonso. English-speaking estate agents such as Roscioli (or, strictly speaking, a couple of his younger staff) are thin on the ground and there is no established network of Anglophone agents, architects and builders of the kind that springs up when the Brits move in. In fact, as Hodgson says, loyally: “It’s not Tuscany — but this area has nothing to be ashamed of.”
On the market
This second-floor, two-bed flat in the historic centre of Arpino also has a three-room ground floor apartment, giving a total floor area of 170sq m. Some work is needed. For sale for £70,000 with Tecnocasa, +39 0776 809 200, www.tecnocasa.com
Once renovated, this stone farmhouse near Veroli will have 150sq m of living space on two floors. The property also comes with a 3,500sq m hillside plot with olive trees. It is being sold for £50,000 through Tecnocasa, +39 0775 238 997, www.tecnocasa.com
More hot spots with low prices
Ciociaria is not the only area in central Italy where it is still possible to find affordable properties. The high prices and active marketing of popular destinations such as Tuscany and Umbria, and now, increasingly, Puglia in the south, may have created the misleading impression that Italy is off-limits for buyers with less than £100,000 in their pockets.
But, you can buy into the timeless civilisation and landscape of Italy for less than is being asked in the much-hyped “emerging markets” of Slovenia, Croatia or Bulgaria. Apartments and houses in unspoilt villages and small towns, and farmhouses in various states of repair, are still going for a song — although it might take a bit more effort to track them down.
Abruzzo, which borders Ciociaria on Italy’s wild and mountainous spine and extends to the Adriatic coast, has started to take off as a place to invest — especially since Ryanair began direct flights to the seaside resort of Pescara.
Some of the borghi, or ancient villages, such as the delightful Santo Stefano di Sessanio, are easily as imposing as any in Tuscany — without the tourist hordes — and everything, including property, is much cheaper.
A dilapidated farmhouse can be picked up for £50,000 in the mountain villages surrounding Abruzzo’s rugged Gran Sasso national park, home to bears, wolves and wild orchids. Village flats sell for as little as £30,000, though you will probably have to pay more if you want some outside space. Prossima Casa has traditional old houses, some with terraces, in the historic hilltop town of Introdacqua, less than an hour from Pescara, from £25,000.
For ski fans, Nova Domus is selling mountain retreats in the Abruzzi ski resort of Tagliacozzo, less than an hour from Rome, at prices from £16,000-£37,000.
The delightful town of Canino, on the Rome side of the Tuscany/Lazio border, is 35-minute drive to the beach and in easy reach of Lake Bolsena. Rome is just over 60 miles away, though its two airports are on the opposite side of the city.
The Agenzia Gabetti has a two-bed flat in the town for £53,000, while a half-developed ruin with superb views is available for £37,000 with Studio Tuscania.
A semi-restored farmhouse near the town, with outbuildings and its own vines and olive trees on the 10,000 sq meters of land, is for sale for £142,000 through www.villecasali.com.
Prossima Casa, 00 39 338 308 5006 or 00 44 121 288 3194 (Skype), www.prossimacasa.com; Nova Domus, 00 39 328 337 0103, robert444@inwind.it; Agenzia Gabetti, 00 39 076 687 9869, www.gabetti.it; Studio Tuscania, 00 39 076 144 4030, www.tecnocasa.it
