Inside the Palazzo

by Paolo Tomassi

Venice, 1976. A six-year-old boy realises that the palazzo his father is restoring hides a secret. The unusual bond between him and the daughter of the new owners, who have come from London to take possession of the ancient mansion, unveils complicated plots, woven over the centuries by someone from the past still searching for his freedom.

United by their mutual differences, the young protagonists finally bring to light the truth kept hidden inside the palazzo.

240 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 4, 2024

Reviews

[Alex Cantone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a haunted house story with a supernatural bent, along varying timelines. The ghost: in the fourteenth century a noble Christian Armenian couple seek to flee the advances of the Mamluks, seeking a passage to Cyprus. The young wife gives birth prematurely to a boy, naming him ‘Ari’. In Cyprus they are still not safe and the baby, along with the record of his birth and artefacts from his heritage, is wrapped in a woollen cloth – reputedly from the blanket in which Christ’s body was wrapped after the Crucifixion – and smuggled out to the Bailo (ambassador/consul of Venice in the colonies) – who adopts him as his own. The boy’s growth is stunted (dwarfism?) but his intellect is way beyond his years, almost that of an adult- and the Bailo does all to encourage him.

Disaster strikes when he and the boy (now almost six) arrive in Venice to the Bailo’s wife by an arranged marriage and their daughter. Convinced the boy is the Bailo’s illegitimate son, she senses a threat to her daughter’s inheritance.

A palazzo is constructed at the Bailo’s behest (time is fluid here), as a symbol of his power and position in Venice: whereas the matrimonial home a dowry, passed from mother to daughter over the generations – and during the Bailo’s absence the wife seizes her opportunity to curse and dispose of the boy.

(I won’t ruin the story with details – suffice to say the boy remains hidden for centuries, protected by that piece of woollen cloth, and uses his amazing intellect to manipulate events around him to break from the curse.)

Fast forward to the 1970’s. The house is now in the hands of an American and his English wife, with their daughter Angela, obsessed with drawing pictures from her vivid dreams, and befriended by Jacopo, the young son of the architect the couple have engaged to renovate the palazzo. The two children make a startling discovery, which they try to keep secret.

There are other characters involved and diversions across history, but what drew me as a reader was the attention to detail of Venice, - its landmarks, customs, mores, festivals and speciality foods – while the frescos point to icons and Animalia of the Middle East / Mesopotamian region.

Author Paolo Tomassi obviously knows Venice (along with its at times darker history) particularly well. At first I found the language a little overdone (using 50 words where an Aussie would have taken 16) but I was soon caught up in the flow. Helpfully, this ebook has hyperlinks to a glossary of terms from which I learned A LOT.

I found it to be an outstanding novel, which I recommend to readers who enjoy European history and romance.

[Erin O'Neill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I purchased this book while visiting Venice and was excited to read a story which took place in the streets I was currently exploring. I did enjoy that aspect of this book, but the story itself was a bit jumbled and the English translation might not be the best experience of this book.
If you’re looking to read something unusual that covers mysticism, religious relics and the butterfly effect, this is your book. If you want something straightforward with clearly defined beginning, middle and end, solely based in scientific reality, this is not your book. Your choice.