Household insurance recommendations please

you may well get conflicting information however,as a business we had to take out third party insurance for guests etc on that occasion i asked my agent who is also a friend about house content insurance.He asked me if we had any important items in the house eg. expensive jewelry,icons,important paintings,objects of high value eg, antiques, and the like.When i replied that we did not his advice was not to bother with contents insurance the cost of which outweighed any particular benefits.This was not the first time i'd been told this.Fortunately we live in a country where theft of PC's,televisions and similar is negligable .of course we have insurance on the building flood/fire etc.The friend/agent represents Allianz  the giant german insurance group btw.All insurance policies in Italy are about twenty pages of tiny text, i have never read one nor will i.it's really not worth the time.it might indeed be worth trusting your banks suggestion.as solutions all appear very similar in the end.unless things have changed (recently) you will not get earthquake insurance in Italy but ,apparently, you can with Lloyds in London. 

We use Castorama - buildings and 3rd Party insurance, but not contents [our italian friends advised against contents insurance - because of the cost]Small place in the hills - 91Euros/year

I use Uk broker David Roberts and Partners, based in Southport, 01704 508400 and have done for the last 10 years. Comprehensive building (including earthquake) and contents insurance, policy in English with a company called Andrew Copeland International Ltd. I know that I have read on this site that other Italian owners use this company. My policy is for a private house, i.e. no rentals

I use Zurigo (Zurich) and have found them good and will pay out if you have a claim and also offer a good level of Third party liabilty.Earthquake insurance is not included but as we had a very thorough anti seismic renovation a few years ago I am not too bothered. Price works out at 1 euro for each 1000 of value on a large house more if it is a small property to allow for the same public liability cover. If you have a UK address you could ask for a quote from their UK office and then you would find it easier to understand the policy.

I have no opinion on insurance, but the search engine does work!It isn't the box at the top right - that trawls through old Italy Magazine stuff: but when you have the Community page open there is a line of links just below where it says Italy Answers. If you click on the word Search that searches the 'community' and the old forum answers.

i use Intasure (intasure.com) for both contents & building insurance for my private, non rental property in Umbria... about the same as I pay for my house in the UK.