Look up!
Milan, as you would expect, is not full of houses with gardens. At least not at street level. You see, most Italians residing in cities live in appartments. Appartment buildings come in all shapes and sizes, from two stories up. There are quite a few 15 or more storey buildings here. Our appartment building has only 5 stories, by the way. As you may expect, not many appartment dwellers are lucky enough to have their own personal gardens. Well, those not living on the top floors. If you happen to wander around, and actually raise your eyes above ground level, you see some of the most amazing sights.
I believe that it is or was quite common for the constructor of an appartment building to reserve the final two floors for him/herself and family. Quite often you find that the upper floor or floors resemble a traditional ground based house, or more commonly a bungalow (that is a one storey house in the UK, for anyone not familiar with the term, which I believe to be Indian in origin). Surrounding these 'houses in the air' are balconies and huge terraces and I know of at least one appartment which even boasts its own swimming pool. The thing which struck me most though, about these on-high spaces, is the amount of vegetation there often is. Some of these spaces do there level best to resemble a miniature forest with trees and bushes of all shapes and sizes. It does make you wonder just whether the buildings were built to support what must be a considerable amount of extra weight.
I have long dreamed of flying over low over Milan in a helicopter, because I'm sure I would see some most amazing sights. So, the next time you find yourself in Milan, or Italy, for that matter, because the phenomenon is common throughout the peninsula, look up and try to catch a few glimpses of some of these roof-top marvels. They fascinate me. I would love to own one of these gardens in the air, but alas, they come at a price. You pay approximately 50% of the price of cost of 'covered' appartment space. Prices here are by the metre. Depending on the area, you will pay around 3000 a square metre, so that's 1500 per metre of terrace space, minimum. If you go for some of the more central parts this figure can easily quadruple.
That's the end of today's observation. Maybe I'll scribble a few words about Italian houses, appartments, that should be and the process that you need to go through to end up with one. As you might expect, it's not a process which is particularly straight forward and it is also quite expensive too, just to make matters more interesting. Got to go and retrieve baby from his day nursery, so that's another reason for signing out. Bye for now.
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Photos from Flickr
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