Neighbours and the shared building in Italian

The second entry is il palazzo di appartamenti, and the word in the middle of it is one an English reader will take far too grandly. « Palace » in English names one kind of building and very nearly one only: the residence of a monarch or a bishop, and by extension anything huge and showy, a cinema called the Palace. Il palazzo in Italian is any substantial building of several storeys, and in ordinary speech it is simply the block you live in. Abito in un palazzo degli anni sessanta is a flat in a nineteen-sixties block and not a claim to nobility; il portone del palazzo is the street door, i vicini di palazzo are the people on the other floors, and the caretaker further down this list is il custode del palazzo. The grand sense does exist — il Palazzo Reale in Naples or in Turin — and with a capital letter il Palazzo stands for political power in the abstract, much as « Westminster » does here. But the ordinary sense is the default, and taking it for « palace » turns every second Italian address into a stately home.