Sometimes neighborhood disputes can escalate into pure pettiness, and nowhere is this more evident than in a small Sicilian village where a homeowner constructed an extraordinarily narrow house for the sole purpose of making his neighbor's life miserable. This spiteful construction has become so notorious that it now attracts tourists from around the world.
In the village of Petralia Sottana, a small town located in the Palermo region of Sicily, stands an unusual building known as the "Casa del Dispetto" (or "Casa du Currivu" in Sicilian dialect, meaning "house of spite" or "house of malice"). This curious structure, built in the 1950s, emerged from a bitter conflict between neighbors that has become local legend.
The dispute began when one property owner requested permission to build upward and add floors to his existing house. However, his neighbor – who according to village stories was actually his brother-in-law – refused to grant the necessary authorization for the vertical expansion. Faced with this legal obstacle, the frustrated homeowner devised an ingenious but vindictive alternative solution.
Unable to legally obtain approval to expand upward, the property owner chose a different path entirely. He decided to build horizontally, constructing a new building in the narrow space available between two existing structures. The design was deliberately calculated: positioned just far enough away to comply with local building regulations, but built extremely narrow specifically to block his neighbor's view and natural light.
The resulting "Casa del Dispetto" has become a local attraction, standing two stories tall but measuring barely three feet wide from front to back at its maximum width. Inside this architectural oddity, visitors find virtually nothing that could be considered livable – just a floor and a staircase. Local residents joke that two people couldn't even pass each other easily within its confines.
As one might expect, this house was never intended for residential purposes. It wasn't designed to house anyone, but simply to cast a shadow over the view of the uncooperative neighbor. While officially constructed in compliance with minimum legal distances between buildings, this structure serves only one function: embodying decades-old resentment in concrete and stone.
This 70-year-old story reminds us that spite-driven construction projects remain relevant today. The Sicilian house echoes the Anglo-Saxon tradition of "spite houses" – buildings constructed primarily out of revenge or malice toward neighbors. In some ways, this practice mirrors strategies employed by modern property owners dealing with difficult situations, similar to cases where landlords in cities like Nice have moved into their own properties to force out unwanted occupants.
The Casa del Dispetto stands as a testament to human pettiness, proving that sometimes the most creative architectural solutions arise not from practical needs, but from the desire to get the last word in a neighborhood feud. Today, this monument to spite continues to draw curious visitors who come to witness firsthand how far people will go to settle old scores.
