Antony
Rocca

I was born in the Netherlands and grew up in Italy. At twenty-four I moved back to Amsterdam. At thirty-four, my Italian wife brought me home. In between, I trained as an architect at La Sapienza in Rome — five years of learning to read buildings. Not just how they look, but how they behave. Where water enters. How load moves through a wall. What a crack means when it runs diagonally from a lintel. This is not the kind of knowledge you find in a listing.

Before buying my house in Le Marche, I visited fifty properties. Fifty. I drove across four regions, walked through farmhouses, villas, ruins described as "full of potential," apartments described as "in excellent condition." I found structural problems the agents hadn't noticed or hadn't mentioned. I found locations the photographs had carefully avoided showing. I found rooms behind locked doors that agents refused to open — one because he had forgotten the keys, another because he simply didn't want us to see what was there.

It matters. It matters enormously. I bought my first Italian property in Rome, sold it, and used everything I had learned to find and buy the right house in Le Marche — the one I live in now, with my wife and three dogs, surrounded by the Italian countryside I left at twenty-four and spent ten years wanting back.

ISI is what I wish had existed when I was searching. Not an agent — I had plenty of those. Not a lawyer — I had one. A pair of qualified, independent eyes that would walk into a property before I drove four hours to see it, and tell me honestly what was there. Someone working only for me.

The Italian property market is not straightforward. I say this as someone who loves Italy deeply and has chosen to build his life here. It is not straightforward. But it rewards the buyer who takes the time to see clearly. ISI gives you that time — and that clarity — without the four-hour drives, the forgotten keys, or the agents who think one house is much the same as another.

That is what I do. That is all I do.