Entrance Hall and Main Door: Common Parts and Cost Sharing

The entrance hall (androne) and the main door fall among the common parts of the building listed by Article 1117 of the Italian Civil Code. They are elements necessary to the very configuration of the property and to the link between the street and the units, which is why they are presumed to belong to all owners. The practical consequence is that the costs of maintenance, cleaning, lighting and reconstruction are shared among everyone on the basis of thousandths (millesimi), even for those who do not use them daily.

What entrance hall, vestibule and main door are

The entrance hall is the covered entry space that connects the public road with the stairs, the lift, the courtyard or the other internal accesses. The vestibule and porticoes perform a similar passage function. The main door is the principal door of the building, closing its access to the outside. All these elements have a function of transit and common protection, and are expressly named among the condominium parts.

Their common nature does not depend on the use an individual makes of them, but on their structural function: the entrance hall and the main door serve to make the whole building accessible and secure.

Even those with an independent access contribute

A frequently misunderstood point concerns the owner whose unit has an independent entrance from the street, for example a ground-floor shop or an apartment with its own door. That owner too is a co-owner of the entrance hall and the main door and must contribute to the related costs. The reason is that these are common assets for the very existence of the building, not services one may or may not use.

Exemption is allowed only if a title, such as the purchase deed or the contractual regulation, expressly excludes that asset from the common ownership of that unit. In the absence of such a title, the obligation to contribute remains full.

How costs are shared

The costs of the entrance hall and the main door are divided in proportion to ownership thousandths, under the general rule of Article 1123, first paragraph, of the Civil Code. The floor-based criterion provided by Article 1124 for stairs does not apply, because the entrance hall and the main door do not serve the floors in a differentiated way, but the whole building as a unit.

• Ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of the main door and entrance hall: shared on general thousandths
• Lighting, cleaning and painting of the entrance hall: shared on general thousandths
• Replacement or reconstruction of the main door: shared on thousandths, not in equal parts
• Automatic opening systems and intercoms connected to the main door: follow the same criterion unless a separate table applies

It is important to remember that a resolution sharing the cost of the main door in equal parts, instead of on thousandths, is flawed: the legal criterion cannot be replaced by a majority, but only by a unanimous agreement or a contractual regulation.

Modifications, decorum and safety

A single owner may use the entrance hall and the main door under Article 1102, without altering their purpose and without preventing equal use by others. They may not therefore permanently occupy the entrance hall with objects, obstruct the passage or modify the main door at will. Replacing the main door with a different model, or installing opening systems, affects architectural decorum and must be resolved by the meeting.

As for safety, the entrance hall and the main door fall among the assets in the condominium's custody: a maintenance defect causing damage, such as a fall over an unmarked step or a gate closing abruptly, may trigger liability under Article 2051 of the Civil Code.

Orderly management of common costs

To avoid disputes over allocation, the administrator must apply the tables correctly and keep documentation of the works. With software like AmministraPro the costs of the entrance hall and the main door are automatically charged to the correct thousandths and flow into the financial statement, with the history of quotes and invoices available to the meeting. The features are described on the /funzioni page and the plans, with transparent costs, on the /prezzi page.