Plang — Architecture Studio in Italy | Buying and Renovating a House in Italy
Plang Architecture Studio, Verona
A restored historic building in Italy

Historic houses in Italy

The architecture studio for your dream house in Italy.

Video slot — add mp4 files, then list them in Tweaks › heroVideo

From house hunting to handing you the keys.
One trusted contact person coordinating all the right people for you.

Where

Italy, and wherever else you need us.

A TRUSTED NETWORK

Notaries, lawyers, surveyors, craftsmen

Your taste. Our Design.

An architect at her desk in the Plang studio in Verona, working on a project

We design the house with you:
the plans, the light, the materials,
every door and every tap.

Selected work

Buildings that were already here.

Apartments in the centro storico of Verona, villas in the countryside. Every project room by room, with the plans, the technical detail, and what the owners decided.

See the work →

Services

Everything between a listing in Italy and a house you can walk into.

Eight things, in the order you'd meet them. You can take the whole sequence or stop anywhere along it. Most clients arrive for one and stay for the rest.

01

Video Consultation

Half an hour, an hour, or as long as it takes to get your thinking straight. What you have in mind, what Italy can give you, and what the next move would be.

02

Property Search

We build a brief with you, then find and visit properties with you or by ourselces; including the ones that never reach a listing.
You see the honest version of each, with what's wrong with it.

03

Technical Due Diligence

Before you commit: structure, roof and damp, catastal and land-registry checks, planning status, easements, energy class, and what the building may legally become. One written report, in English.

04

Pre-Purchase Inspection

Once your offer is accepted, we go through the house and tell you plainly what works and what doesn't. Does the air conditioning run? Does the oven light? The dishwasher? Your offer can be made conditional on this inspection.

05

Architecture & Interiors

The design itself, from the first sketch to the last handle: plans, light, materials, kitchens, joinery, furniture. Your decisions, drawn properly.

06

Permits & Heritage

The comune, the soprintendenza, listed-building consent, catastal corrections, and the paperwork that has to be right before anyone lifts a tile.

07

Remote Site Management

We run the building site while you're at home: tenders, contracts, the trades, the schedule, direzione lavori and safety. A report every Friday, photos most days.

08

Cost Control

We check every quote and every invoice against the measured works, approve payments stage by stage, and tell you the moment a number moves.

You can be four thousand miles away for all of it except the parts you'd enjoy.

Start here

Remote site management

Watching the progress from your kitchen table in Connecticut.

A report every Friday. Photos most days. You'll end up knowing more about this building site than the neighbours do.

You'll follow the renovation as closely as if you were walking through the rooms yourself: what was done, what comes next, and anything we need you to decide. In English, of course.

Weekly report 06 03.08

Masseria, Lecce

Week of 27 — 31 July

On site

Demolition of the plaster in the ground-floor rooms is complete.

Site photograph — ground floor with the plaster removed

Ground floor, east room — 29 July

Site photograph — the vaulted ceiling uncovered

Vault uncovered under the false ceiling — 30 July

Also this week

Demolition in the former caretaker's apartment.

Site photograph — the caretaker's apartment

Caretaker's apartment — 31 July

Next week

Plumbing and electrical first fix begins.

Waiting on you

The bathroom sanitary ware and taps — our selection is attached.

The studio

An Italian studio, fluent in more than Italian.

Plang is a young architecture studio based in Verona, made up of architects and designers of several nationalities. We work in English every day, and we know what a client four thousand miles away needs to be told, and when.

We follow projects across the whole of Italy, and we follow them from end to end: finding the building, checking it, buying it, designing it, and running the site until the keys are in your hand.

You'll have a whole team behind the project: architects, site managers and the professionals we've worked with for years.

Based in
Verona
Working
All over Italy, and wherever else you need us

Old buildings

A 400-year-old building comes with rules.
We happen to know them all.

Listed buildings and what can and cannot legally be changed. Centro storico constraints. Soprintendenza approvals. Catastal irregularities. Traditional materials and the craftsmen who still work them. And streets too narrow for a truck, which is not a metaphor.

soprintendenza
The heritage authority. On a listed building in Italy, they decide what it is allowed to become.
sopralluogo
The site inspection. Ours checks what is sound and what isn't: roof, structure, damp, systems.
centro storico
The historic centre. Beautiful to own, and the most regulated address in any Italian town.
comune
The local authority. Every town in Italy has its own, with its own building rules.
notaio
The notary who makes a property purchase in Italy legal. Whoever buys a house has to sign in front of him, in person, or by power of attorney.
catasto
The Italian land registry.
Old buildings might not match their own plans, and the mismatch has to be fixed before you buy.

What clients say

★★★★★ Read every review on Google
★★★★★
"Since we live in the United States, we needed someone reliable and detail-oriented, capable of making decisions on our behalf. When we finally arrived at the apartment months later, everything was absolutely perfect."
Donna Baia · Google review
★★★★★
"An architecture studio with a capital A. I recommend them warmly."
Filippo · Google review, translated from Italian
★★★★★
"They listened carefully to everything I needed and turned my ideas into a project that went beyond what I expected — from the first drawings to the choice of materials and the site itself."
Silvia Barbieri · Google review, translated from Italian

Start here

There's a step between "someday" and "we bought a house in Italy."

Write whatever comes to your mind in the form.
We can help.

Thank you{{ sentName }}. We've received your message.

Thank you for writing to us. We usually reply within two working days.

That's the whole form. No phone number, no budget question.

Questions people actually ask

No. You will never be in a room where you can't follow what's happening: we translate as it goes.

Finding the right building takes three months to a year, depending on how specific you are. The purchase, two to four months. A full restoration, three to twenty-four months.

No. Some clients come every few months, some come twice. Some come when the renovation it's finished. It's up to you.

Yes. You'll need a codice fiscale and an Italian bank account, and we arrange both with our trusted partners. If you'd rather not fly over for the signing, a power of attorney handles it.

Then you don't buy. It happens, and it's a good outcome rather than a failed one. You'll know a great deal more about what you actually want, which is not a wasted year.

Usually yes, with the right registrations at the comune. Tell us early, because it changes the plan: a second bathroom, harder floors, a lock on one door, and a cupboard that stays yours.

Both are manageable, and both are worth settling before you buy rather than after. We bring in an Italian tax adviser and, where it matters, someone who works across both systems for American clients. You get it in writing, in English.

Yes to the first, and in practice yes to the second. The codice fiscale is the Italian tax code — the number that lets you sign anything, and it's free. You can get it from an Italian consulate in the United States or we can arrange it here by power of attorney. An Italian account isn't legally required to buy, but you'll want one: the utilities, the local taxes and the builders all run through it more easily. Both are administrative, both take days rather than months, and neither is something you should be doing yourself from four thousand miles away.

Not as a single certification, no. Italy has no national home-inspector body of that kind. The equivalent work is done by architects and engineers registered with their professional order, who assess the building's condition, check that what stands matches what the cadastral records say, and flag what is visibly wrong. What matters here is not a badge but the register and the experience: someone who has worked on residential and historic buildings in that specific region. That is the inspection we run before you commit.

We tender the work to firms we've built with before, then show you the quotes side by side with our reading of each. You decide. We're on site while they work, and they invoice against measured works, not against optimism.