Historic Customs House in Torbole Sold for Nearly $600K to Local Buyer
The news spread quickly on Monday evening: “the finance checkpoint“, the ancient customs house of the Imperial Royal Government of South Tyrol, has been sold. A fact that is, in itself, quite normal, to tell the truth. A sale, like many others that happen between private citizens.
However, it is certain that if the sale concerns this small building on the port of Torbole, filled with history and at the same time quite charming and picturesque, the situation changes. At least, it sparks curiosity. And quite a lot, given that it’s being talked about and discussed extensively among Torbole residents.
Moreover – according to a “well-informed” source – it was sold to a local. A Torbole native, in any case, unknown and who has not yet revealed himself. Assuming that the mysterious buyer is indeed a local Torbole resident. The price? In these cases, the actual amount paid usually does not leak out. But the source (still the “well-informed”) quotes a figure close to 600 million lire.
Price and Characteristics of the Property
An enormous sum, considering the limited usable space of the little building. Spread over two floors (ground floor and first floor), and considering the internal staircase, it would barely reach 30/35 square meters, even less. Like 20 million lire per square meter. Practically a whim for an original enthusiast.
But, what’s the point of owning that small and peculiar former customs house, so similar to the Seven Dwarfs’ house? Many indeed have fallen in love with it. In fact, it seems that more than one interested party approached the real estate agency responsible for the sale.
Although, ultimately, it’s not quite clear what one would do with it. The rooms are quite cramped, after all. Then there’s the privacy: it’s completely nonexistent. Practically, it’s like being in the middle of a square, under everyone’s gaze, whenever entering or leaving. Habitable, if at all, only for a few days of vacation, it doesn’t seem very suitable.
In reality, so far, the ancient customs house, where our grandparents used to pass through to have luggage and goods inspected on their way to Italy and vice versa to Austria, has been hardly used. Until the annexation of Trentino to the “motherland,” it was, precisely, the guard post of the finance police.
It then passed into the hands of a wealthy Milanese couple. The man used it, disregarding privacy, as a garçonnière: he just wanted to stay away from his wife’s eyes, recounts a Torbole native who still remembers the exposure of her voluptuous breasts to the wind from the small balcony for the young lover.
It’s a pity, the same source adds, that the young woman also liked to go out on a boat with a peer, a fiery local boatman from Torbole, always ready for action. Then, for years, no one was seen in the area anymore.
In the early 1980s, there was another change of ownership. The widow sold it under the insistence of Michele Toblini, who passed away a couple of years ago: a playful man remembered for his amusing eccentricities and pranks.
He, too, was a Torbole native, who occasionally returned to the village, renting his “little house,” from which he liked to go out dressed in a red robe and slippers, hair standing up, to the nearby bar for his first coffee of the day.
A brief period. Already in 1985, he also sold the little house. This time to a German. The same person who, according to persistent reports, is now selling it in these days.