Palazzi and historic town houses for sale in Piedmont

The hill towns of Piedmont are full of buildings that were put up for families who no longer exist. A palazzo in Cherasco, Asti, Bra or Nizza Monferrato typically has a street facade giving nothing away, a courtyard behind it, a piano nobile one floor up with the ceiling height and the frescoes, service rooms above that, and cellars below that run further than the footprint of the house. Twenty-odd rooms is normal. So is a complete absence of parking.

Most buildings of this kind in a historic centre carry some form of protection. If the building is listed, the Soprintendenza has a say in what you may do to it — commonly the facade, the roofline, the windows and any frescoed or vaulted interiors. That is not a reason to walk away; it is a reason to find out the exact scope of the vincolo before you plan a kitchen, because the answer determines whether a project takes one year or three. Protection sometimes comes with access to restoration grants, which is worth asking about in the same conversation.

Living in a historic centre is a genuinely different proposition from living in the hills. You can walk to the baker, the market and three decent restaurants, and you will never park outside your own front door. Towns like Cherasco and Alba are busy in the autumn and quiet in February. If the building has already been divided into apartments there will be a condominio with shared costs and shared decisions, which is worth reading before you commit.

Heating a thousand square metres of masonry is its own subject, and the answer is usually zoning: restore and heat the part you live in, and take the rest slowly.

The towns are genuinely different from one another. Cherasco is laid out on a chessboard plan with long straight streets and a Savoy history, and it is quiet in a way Alba is not. Asti is a proper working city with medieval towers, a serious market and a railway line to Turin. Alba is the busiest and the best connected to the wine trade, and prices follow. Bra gave the world Slow Food and has the civic energy that goes with it. Nizza Monferrato is smaller, cheaper and increasingly on people's lists.

Pick the town first and the building second. The restoration of a palazzo takes years, and the thing you cannot change afterwards is what is outside the front door.