House safety/burglaries
 

I read a thread in the Spanish forum about houses being burgled after being marked with chalk beforehand and made me think about burglaries in Italy.
How safe do you feel in your house?
I feel safe, but only after I close all the metal shutters on all windows and use the alarm when alone with the kids.
When I first moved to this country I hated living behind porte blindate, bars/shutters, on the windows, but after many of our friends got burgled, I feel they are a necessity.
Must admit that when we have visitors from the UK, they are a bit bemused with all the security.

Regards,

Isakat

Re: House safety/burglaries
 

I feel fairly safe where I am. I'm in a garden in the city but the wall is over 40' so I don't envisage too many climbing it! Someone could kick the outside door down but I do close all my shutters and lock my doors. There are break-ins here so I don't take chances!

Re: House safety/burglaries
 

I feel so safe that I sleep with the bedroom windows wide open in summer.
However, I have floor to ceiling french door type windows in the bedrooms. The bottom half has a metal railing outside the window and I pull down the top blind a bit to reach the railing.

If anybody wanted to really get in I suppose they could, but they'd have to struggle to get the blind wound back up first or get their heads stuck trying to squeeze through the railing.

The key in the front door turns about 6 times and I always lock that. I just have to remember to always remove the key because OH couldn't get in at 2am one morning and the doorbell ringing didn't wake me up at all. He finally thought to use the phone and that did wake me up - it's right next to my bed.

I never lock my car much come to think of it.

Re: House safety/burglaries
 

Hmmmmm well I don't feel as safe here as I did in the UK tbh.... this may have something to do with the fact that I faced a man in my hallway who had scaled the gate and wandered round the house and in through the kitchen door which was closed but not locked as I was in the house. They had buzzed the buzzer but I was downstairs sorting the washing out and faced him as I came up the stairs with a load of washing, but I still feel it was a flipping cheek. We had only been here a few weeks. He turned around and legged it and I did follow him as I just couldn't believe it but he got into a waiting car and they sped off. We were then actually burgled a few months later whilst we had nipped to the shops in the early evening. They had crowbarred the blind and then the window and got in easily. Couldn't get out the front door but carried telly, laptop, kids ds's etc through the same window which faces the street. Noone saw anything of course even though the house is surrounded by neighbours.... :sneaky: Was horrible and we have never been burgled in the Uk.... discovered that this was not the first time this house had been broken into.... we insisted that the landlord fit a burglar alarm after that though.... I'm still waiting for it to happen again to be honest though.... :(

Re: House safety/burglaries
 

I was renting an end terrace house with a shuttered double door facing the street. In the middle of the night someone tried to force open the shutters with a crowbar, but fled when the dogs raised the alarm.

I have always used the window and door shutters when living in Italy.

Scratcher

Re: House safety/burglaries
 

I felt very safe in our village. Nothing ever happened. In the summer we would sleep with our front door wide open, and we lived on the main road down to the beach. The only thing that happened was about a month before we moved away and a large african gentleman pinched my bike from the front garden. My MIL saw him but didn't realise what he was doing :blink:
We were in a "protected" area however and there were burglaries in the local town. We were only 20k from where Denise Pipitone went missing too.