moflo-your online guide to Florence

Finding somewhere to live is one of the trials of semi-permanent residence in Florence. Its a real lottery as you can pay through the nose for squalid single room, or be lucky and find a gorgeous frescoed suite for half the price. It depends on a number of things such as location, of course, but then also the opportunism of the landlord involved and your perceived vulnerability as a non-Fiorentino with an urgent need for rented accommodation. With any luck you'll find a place owned by an old signora who still thinks that the Lira is legal tender and doesn't plan to be furba and rip off foreigners.

Not long ago I found a flat just beyond the edge of the centre with a beautiful terrace outside and a great many idiosyncrasies inside. It can be the way in Florentine buildings, constructed generations ago and since adapted for a more modern world. Kitchen sinks are often found hidden in nooks and bedrooms in crannies. If, for example, I need to relight the boiler (a daily ritual) I have to enter my poor flatmate’s bedroom, pass through his wardrobe and wedge myself into an ancient corner space that I am sure was originally intended for a latrine.

Thankfully, though, we are not wanting for space. Neither, bizarrely, are we lacking in plug sockets. This might not seem such a strange feature for a house, but considering that three quarters of my possessions at some point plug thirstily into an electrical socket I am constantly amazed to discover more and more that are still spare.

As an aside, I should point out that most old buildings have limited wiring and that the Italian nation ‘benefit’ from two different sizes of plug and socket. I have frequently enquired as to why this is, but as far as I know they carry the same current and vary from appliance to appliance with no discernible regularity. In fact, they are identical in all but a centimetre of width. However such a situation occurred, a cynic may suspect that there is now too much money being made by influential men in the ‘plug size-converter’ industry for Italy to ever go back.

So, I have double sockets (catering for both sizes), single sockets, outdoor sockets, built-in extending sockets and a plethora of switches by every door. Not light switches though, because there are no ceiling lights in the whole house. If you want light, it has to plug into a socket and as I am currently discovering, working to a single lamp with a dull energy-saving lightbulb has a strangely medieval feel to it. Only the small bathroom has built-in lights and they are served by no less than three independant switches. Never have I been able to set the mood of my toilet visit with such precision.

While on the toilet I can also answer the door thanks to the convenient bathroom ‘citofono’ – the phone-buzzer that allows you to talk to whoever is sueing for entry from the street, then unlock the outer door and even turn on the corridor lights for them. In most Italian households the citofono is located by the front door yet we have one in every room, including low down by the toilet, giving the whole flat an air of unimaginative science fiction.

The landlord, it turns out, used to be an electrician. He is a distant uncle of my flat-mate who is from southern Italy. Apparently when converting the property for sub-letting many years ago, he envisioned himself as the architect of some kind of half-baked house of the future. Either that or he just wanted to practice fitting electrical outlets. I have resisted asking whether he never made it as an electrician because his love of sockets and switches could never make up for his reluctance to enter the world of ceiling lights.

Va bene.

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