Hi Hilary! Thank you so much for reaching out. How nice that we’ll be neighbours.
Bookshops in general can be quite a tricky business proposition, and I’ve definitely been warned about the difficulties of starting a shop in Italy. But I’m up for a challenge!
Will you be in town in December? We are only part-time in Narni for the next several months until my son graduates from high school in Amsterdam. We’ll be there for three weeks over Christmas. I’d love to meet up with you for coffee and a chat!
I don’t want to rain on your idea; I’d love a little thing like what you’re describing. But if you’re opening a shop of any sort that isn’t a bar or tabaccheria, (and even they struggle) it’s important to think about where your market is, and whether it will support your idea. I’ll just pass along a few observations.
Here, for store-front businesses, the market is either locals or the tourists during the Festa and in the season. Because we’re waaaay up here on top of our mountain, a 15 minute drive from the train station, there isn’t much reason for a lot of tourists - nearly always on their way to Spoleto and Assisi - to get off the train and come all the way up here. Something like what you’re describing would do very well in Assisi (if you can stand the hordes) or Spello (if you can’t), or Spoleto. Narni isn’t a big name town, is quite on the tatty and unkempt side, and its commune only cares about the Medieval Festa. f
We do have a fragment of a university - International Studies attached to the University of Perugia, so the south end of town (it’s actually north-east, but never mind) has a lot of student accommodation and there is a small cadre of 20-somethings around that section of the centro in the evenings. They mostly cluster in the three main bars in the Piazza dei Priori.
So Narni doesn’t really seem like a hugely bookish town, and nearly all the shops that survive here do so by filling a practical need aimed at the very modest needs of the local people - food, old-lady-shops, hair dressers, ferramenta, farmacia - and there’s economic room for about one of each, and most of those slots are filled. There just aren’t enough people to create enough need for more than one butcher, green grocer, bakery, etc. It’ll say a lot about the market demographics that we have two farmacias, four hairdressers and two old-lady-shops, all thriving. (I dread the day Alvaro, who owns the only pet supply shop in town, decides it’s not worth it and packs it in.) We had a young guy come up and try a cartolaria, but he was in direct competition with the lady who has run the town cartolaria for decades; no one knew him, and everyone knows her, a local, so he lasted less than six months. If he’d bought a Vodafone franchise, he’d be still here and raking it in, because as unromantic as it sounds, that’s something that fills a real need.
The people who live here are mostly elderly, and they don’t seem like big readers. The ladies are mostly old fashioned Umbrian housewives, and the gents are elderly retired blue collar workers (there was a big factory in Narni Scalo that made giant batteries for the steel industry in Terni, but it closed and that was the end of the blue collar jobs). Like all elderly retired Italians, they are more social than bookish - the big thing here is talking, socialising. Getting together on the benches and at the bar during the evening Passeggiata, in the piazza Garibaldi, on the Duomo steps, and in the Centro, and chatting. Chatting across the terraces with your neighbours in the next building. Chatting on the streets as you walk your dog. Chatting in the bar. Chatting with the shop people. Make your book shop a place where people can come and chat, and you’ll have it made.
The commune government has a lot of fancy-pants, modern city-folk ideas about “the arts” that are popular with middle-income 40 year-old people who don’t live here or aren’t from here, (on the one day it was opened, you should have seen the appalling hyper-modernist rubbish they had in San Domenico church as an art exhibition during the Festa - and should have heard what the old ladies had to say about it in the piazza). Hardly anyone gives any thought to what the local residents actually need. Storefront taxes are incredibly high, and have crushed five attempts at new shops just in the time I’ve been here.
A lot of the time, people have an idea for something they’d like to do, a kind of shop they’d like to run, without thinking much about what is actually needed by the people who live here, who don’t really want to constantly have to get on a bus and go down to Narni Scalo - or worse, Terni - for every practical thing.
There are a lot of kinds of shops that might do well here because they fill an actual need, a market gap, but the Commune won’t prioritise practical needs of locals (they’re obsessed with turning Narni into some Roman, upper-middle class nouveau-riche, modern “cultural and arts centre”) and it seems that very often when someone opens a new shop there isn’t much thought given to what the local market actually needs. And as the town shrinks and ages those needs will be presenting a smaller and smaller market.
Things we actually need up here on the hill, and not in Narni Scalo:
A local veterinarian ambulatorio - everyone has cats and dogs and the nearest vet is waaaay down near Terni
A garden centre
A small vehicles repair shop
A phone store/electronics shop
A bakery that isn’t a fancy pasticceria but just sells normal bread and sandwiches
In other words, normal day-to-day needs kinds of shops. We don’t need any more tourist trinket shops, antique shops or other frilly nonsense. It’s frustrating to see real needs unmet, and businesses going up and down like mushrooms in an autumn rain, because no one is thinking about what the town actually needs.
Things that might go well: high-end artisans, artists and people who have reputations for high quality hand made things that don’t rely on local walk-past custom. There’s an excellent hand-made cobbler, Giuliano, who does a pretty good trade making shoes and bags, and doing refurbishments and repairs - but he’s a native and he took over the business started by his dad 70 years ago. I live here pretty well on what I make from the Substack, and from painting and drawing, and selling prints by drop-shipping - mostly to Americans.
There are a few artists and potters and people of that sort in the countryside around Narni, but I think they don’t spend a lot of time in the centro - if you reached out and maybe organised events aimed at them and their crowd, you might put yourself on the map. And there are some small farmers doing well introducing SAE/permaculture schools and experiences, as well as doing box orders - there’s a nice little weekly market in the piazza on Thursday mornings and the local farmers have standing weekly orders. (I always get there too late, and miss the eggs).
There are quite a lot of old storefront properties that aren’t being used; the main flat street in the upper centro (that the locals call the “new town” bcs it was built in the 13th century) was all artisan shops back in the day, and perhaps could be again if the commune had any idea what it was doing.
So, that’s about the lie of the economic land in Narni.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this! Lots of good information and ideas here. I’ll have pretty minimal startup costs, and own the building, so hopefully I can make a good go of it with the bookshop. Thanks again for reaching out and introducing yourself! I’ll look forward to meeting you in person.
Yes a shop is a hard road. You have some great ideas. I think someone could combine their passion project, such as the book shop, with a area of need, such as you detail. Best if both worlds, but I guess it would come down to being able to afford the taxes etc
Beautiful description! So of course I am curious about the visa issues that allowed your departure from Florida to live and work full time in Amsterdam (and then Narni). Have you written about that somewhere?
I’ll definitely write about it in more detail in future posts. The short answer is that we have Italian citizenship through a distant relative of my husband. It was a ton of work, but of course there’s also a huge amount of privilege in being eligible for an EU passport. I never take it for granted!
Oh yes, without EU citizenship it’s much more difficult. Although the long-awaited digital nomad visa finally does exist now, so I think that’s made things much more viable for people who work remotely.
Oh my. I love how you take us on a tour of Narni. There are lots of cats around. I wonder how the mice residents feel 🤣 thanks for always sharing especially all of the wonderful pictures that you share. Hugs 🤗❤️
Very charming. I hope your dog is alright.
Oh yes, my dog emerged unscathed and unbothered. She’s a sun-worshiper, so she loves visiting Narni.
Hang on… You’re moving to Narni to open a bookshop?
I live here. Been here 3 years. I’ve got a big flat near the Rocca Albernoz.
Ask me anything.
(I have to warn you that Narni tends to kill small businesses. Anything requiring a shop front.)
Hi Hilary! Thank you so much for reaching out. How nice that we’ll be neighbours.
Bookshops in general can be quite a tricky business proposition, and I’ve definitely been warned about the difficulties of starting a shop in Italy. But I’m up for a challenge!
Will you be in town in December? We are only part-time in Narni for the next several months until my son graduates from high school in Amsterdam. We’ll be there for three weeks over Christmas. I’d love to meet up with you for coffee and a chat!
I don’t want to rain on your idea; I’d love a little thing like what you’re describing. But if you’re opening a shop of any sort that isn’t a bar or tabaccheria, (and even they struggle) it’s important to think about where your market is, and whether it will support your idea. I’ll just pass along a few observations.
Here, for store-front businesses, the market is either locals or the tourists during the Festa and in the season. Because we’re waaaay up here on top of our mountain, a 15 minute drive from the train station, there isn’t much reason for a lot of tourists - nearly always on their way to Spoleto and Assisi - to get off the train and come all the way up here. Something like what you’re describing would do very well in Assisi (if you can stand the hordes) or Spello (if you can’t), or Spoleto. Narni isn’t a big name town, is quite on the tatty and unkempt side, and its commune only cares about the Medieval Festa. f
We do have a fragment of a university - International Studies attached to the University of Perugia, so the south end of town (it’s actually north-east, but never mind) has a lot of student accommodation and there is a small cadre of 20-somethings around that section of the centro in the evenings. They mostly cluster in the three main bars in the Piazza dei Priori.
So Narni doesn’t really seem like a hugely bookish town, and nearly all the shops that survive here do so by filling a practical need aimed at the very modest needs of the local people - food, old-lady-shops, hair dressers, ferramenta, farmacia - and there’s economic room for about one of each, and most of those slots are filled. There just aren’t enough people to create enough need for more than one butcher, green grocer, bakery, etc. It’ll say a lot about the market demographics that we have two farmacias, four hairdressers and two old-lady-shops, all thriving. (I dread the day Alvaro, who owns the only pet supply shop in town, decides it’s not worth it and packs it in.) We had a young guy come up and try a cartolaria, but he was in direct competition with the lady who has run the town cartolaria for decades; no one knew him, and everyone knows her, a local, so he lasted less than six months. If he’d bought a Vodafone franchise, he’d be still here and raking it in, because as unromantic as it sounds, that’s something that fills a real need.
The people who live here are mostly elderly, and they don’t seem like big readers. The ladies are mostly old fashioned Umbrian housewives, and the gents are elderly retired blue collar workers (there was a big factory in Narni Scalo that made giant batteries for the steel industry in Terni, but it closed and that was the end of the blue collar jobs). Like all elderly retired Italians, they are more social than bookish - the big thing here is talking, socialising. Getting together on the benches and at the bar during the evening Passeggiata, in the piazza Garibaldi, on the Duomo steps, and in the Centro, and chatting. Chatting across the terraces with your neighbours in the next building. Chatting on the streets as you walk your dog. Chatting in the bar. Chatting with the shop people. Make your book shop a place where people can come and chat, and you’ll have it made.
The commune government has a lot of fancy-pants, modern city-folk ideas about “the arts” that are popular with middle-income 40 year-old people who don’t live here or aren’t from here, (on the one day it was opened, you should have seen the appalling hyper-modernist rubbish they had in San Domenico church as an art exhibition during the Festa - and should have heard what the old ladies had to say about it in the piazza). Hardly anyone gives any thought to what the local residents actually need. Storefront taxes are incredibly high, and have crushed five attempts at new shops just in the time I’ve been here.
A lot of the time, people have an idea for something they’d like to do, a kind of shop they’d like to run, without thinking much about what is actually needed by the people who live here, who don’t really want to constantly have to get on a bus and go down to Narni Scalo - or worse, Terni - for every practical thing.
There are a lot of kinds of shops that might do well here because they fill an actual need, a market gap, but the Commune won’t prioritise practical needs of locals (they’re obsessed with turning Narni into some Roman, upper-middle class nouveau-riche, modern “cultural and arts centre”) and it seems that very often when someone opens a new shop there isn’t much thought given to what the local market actually needs. And as the town shrinks and ages those needs will be presenting a smaller and smaller market.
Things we actually need up here on the hill, and not in Narni Scalo:
A local veterinarian ambulatorio - everyone has cats and dogs and the nearest vet is waaaay down near Terni
A garden centre
A small vehicles repair shop
A phone store/electronics shop
A bakery that isn’t a fancy pasticceria but just sells normal bread and sandwiches
In other words, normal day-to-day needs kinds of shops. We don’t need any more tourist trinket shops, antique shops or other frilly nonsense. It’s frustrating to see real needs unmet, and businesses going up and down like mushrooms in an autumn rain, because no one is thinking about what the town actually needs.
Things that might go well: high-end artisans, artists and people who have reputations for high quality hand made things that don’t rely on local walk-past custom. There’s an excellent hand-made cobbler, Giuliano, who does a pretty good trade making shoes and bags, and doing refurbishments and repairs - but he’s a native and he took over the business started by his dad 70 years ago. I live here pretty well on what I make from the Substack, and from painting and drawing, and selling prints by drop-shipping - mostly to Americans.
There are a few artists and potters and people of that sort in the countryside around Narni, but I think they don’t spend a lot of time in the centro - if you reached out and maybe organised events aimed at them and their crowd, you might put yourself on the map. And there are some small farmers doing well introducing SAE/permaculture schools and experiences, as well as doing box orders - there’s a nice little weekly market in the piazza on Thursday mornings and the local farmers have standing weekly orders. (I always get there too late, and miss the eggs).
There are quite a lot of old storefront properties that aren’t being used; the main flat street in the upper centro (that the locals call the “new town” bcs it was built in the 13th century) was all artisan shops back in the day, and perhaps could be again if the commune had any idea what it was doing.
So, that’s about the lie of the economic land in Narni.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this! Lots of good information and ideas here. I’ll have pretty minimal startup costs, and own the building, so hopefully I can make a good go of it with the bookshop. Thanks again for reaching out and introducing yourself! I’ll look forward to meeting you in person.
I’ll be in town all the time. I live here.
Hi, really interesting info, can you tell me more about the shopfront tax? Do you know how much that costs or any more info about it.
Nope, sorry. Never opened a shop here, so can't give details. I just know they don't last.
Yes a shop is a hard road. You have some great ideas. I think someone could combine their passion project, such as the book shop, with a area of need, such as you detail. Best if both worlds, but I guess it would come down to being able to afford the taxes etc
It’s about to get harder. Umbria just elected a Leftist as regional president. No friend of businesses.
Beautiful description! So of course I am curious about the visa issues that allowed your departure from Florida to live and work full time in Amsterdam (and then Narni). Have you written about that somewhere?
I’ll definitely write about it in more detail in future posts. The short answer is that we have Italian citizenship through a distant relative of my husband. It was a ton of work, but of course there’s also a huge amount of privilege in being eligible for an EU passport. I never take it for granted!
Thanks for that detail. I have done some research on visas and know there are several options and that it is a challenge!
Oh yes, without EU citizenship it’s much more difficult. Although the long-awaited digital nomad visa finally does exist now, so I think that’s made things much more viable for people who work remotely.
I love the way you take us down the streets of Narni, where cats rule.
Much love and success for your future adventure.
Bernadette xx
Thank you so much!
Love the pic with the cay paw prints in the concrete 😍
I HAVE to think that cat knew exactly what she was doing. The paw print placement feels distinctly deliberate.
Cat*
Loved this, as always 💜
Thank you for reading
Oh my. I love how you take us on a tour of Narni. There are lots of cats around. I wonder how the mice residents feel 🤣 thanks for always sharing especially all of the wonderful pictures that you share. Hugs 🤗❤️
The mice did not approve this message. 🐭
🤣🤣🤣
SUCH a great idea, to photograph those cats and share them with us! Thank you!
I’m glad you enjoyed it. ❤️
I love this. 😻I have SOOOOO many photos of Italian cats!
Is it me, or is there something especially photogenic about Italian cats?