Rural Buildings and Change of Use in Tuscany: What the Regional Law Allows and Requires

Picture an old barn at the edge of a field: sound roof, thick walls, and a buyer who already sees a home in it. Before the law sees a home, it asks when the works on the building began, and what the building is used for today.

This article sets out what Regional Law 65/2014 and its implementing regulation provide, as they read on the Regione Toscana collection on 30 September 2026.^[1][2] It does not assess any building.

What counts as rural territory?

The law defines the rural territory as the agricultural and forest areas identified in the planning instruments, the rural nuclei, the areas of high naturalness and the further areas that, while hosting non-agricultural functions, are not urbanised territory.^[3] In any case, everything outside the urbanised territory is considered rural territory.^[4] The municipal planning instruments regulate the building stock in the rural territory, including buildings not in agricultural use.^[5]

The scope of the rules in this article is therefore set by where the building lies as well as by what it is. The rules speak of a edificio rurale, a rural building, including one in residential use, and of an annesso agricolo, an agricultural outbuilding.^[6]

What can be done without changing the agricultural use?

Where there is no farm programme, the law allows, on rural buildings that keep their agricultural use, a list of works: extraordinary maintenance, restoration and conservative restoration, conservative restructuring, works on pertinences, removal of architectural barriers, energy-efficiency works, volume additions, reconstructive restructuring, restoration of collapsed or demolished buildings, replacement, and swimming pools and sports facilities.^[7] The condition is that the works do not change the agricultural use, that the character of the historic building is safeguarded, and that the limits and conditions of the planning instruments are respected.^[7]

Some of these (volume additions of up to 100 cubic metres per rural dwelling, and transfers of volume) are reserved to the professional farmer.^[8] The list refers to the categories of works of arts 134 to 136 of the same law, which are not reproduced here;^[9] the building titles are described in “CILA, SCIA, Permesso di Costruire and the Landscape Authorisation”.

A building in the rural territory whose use is already not agricultural is treated separately. The law allows ordinary maintenance, extraordinary maintenance and conservative restoration without division of the units, and works to remove barriers.^[10] It allows further works, including those that divide units, volume additions, reconstruction, replacement and swimming pools, only where the municipal planning instruments expressly provide for them, and always provided the character of the historic building is safeguarded.^[11]

Why does 15 April 2007 matter?

The limits on changing the agricultural use turn on a date. The date is 15 April 2007, which the law itself identifies as the day the regulation of 9 February 2007 came into force.^[12][13] That regulation implemented the rural-territory chapter of the earlier regional law.^[13] The 2016 regulation repealed it when the new regulation came into force;^[14] its preamble states that the minimum farm areas it sets reproduce those of the 2007 regulation.^[15]

The cases run as follows. Agricultural outbuildings whose works began after 15 April 2007 cannot change their agricultural use.^[16] If use is varied from agricultural use, the law’s article on works carried out without a permit, in total difference from it, or with essential variations applies;^[16] it provides for a demolition order and, if the order is not obeyed, for acquisition by the municipality.^[17]

Rural residential buildings whose works began after 15 April 2007 cannot change their agricultural use for at least twenty years from their completion.^[18] Rural buildings, including residential ones, whose works began before 15 April 2007 can change use on the conditions set out below, in the sections on the farm programme and on works that involve a change of use, without prejudice to what the atti d’obbligo (unilateral undertakings to the municipality) already signed provide, and provided the actual state is legitimate.^[12]

The law measures the date by the start of works, not by the date of a cadastral entry or of the latest title. The documents that show the start of works and the legitimacy of the state are the building file and the cadastral records; “The Cadastre and the Building File” explains what each records, and this article does not classify any building by date.

How does a farm programme open the way to a change?

For farm buildings, including those of historic value, the law allows the change of agricultural use after the farm programme has been approved.^[19] Two conditions are stated.^[19] First, there must be no alternative that allows the building’s recovery for agricultural use.^[19] Second, minimum farm areas, greater than those set in the provincial or metropolitan coordination plan (PTC or PTCM) or, failing those, in the regulation, must be kept in production.^[19] The municipal planning instruments must contain a survey and classification of buildings and complexes of historic value and regulate specifically the works that involve change of use.^[20] The line of 2007 still applies: the provision begins with the words “without prejudice to art. 81”, the article that sets that line.^[21]

On the first condition, the regulation, in an article inserted in 2023, provides that the absence of alternatives includes the absence of housing needs of the professional farmer, of the family members who assist and of the permanent employees in agricultural work, on condition that the minimum farm assets needed for ordinary management are kept and that the actual non-use of the buildings is documented.^[22] The agreement between the municipality and the farmer must include a commitment not to build new rural buildings whose function could have been performed by the buildings changing use, for the duration of the programme.^[22]

On the second, where the provincial or metropolitan plan does not fix the minimum areas, the regulation sets the minimum farm area to keep in production.^[23] The minima run from 0.8 ha to 30 ha, according to the crop.^[23]

For organic farms listed in the regional register these areas are reduced by 30 per cent.^[24] Where the holding has land of different crops, the minimum is reached when the sum of the ratios between each crop’s area and its own minimum is at least one.^[25]

What is the farm programme, and how is it approved?

The farm programme, the PAPMAA, is drawn up by the farmer, and its approval is a preliminary condition for the building titles that depend on it.^[26] The municipality convenes a conference of services to check conformity and obtain the opinions required, including that of the province or metropolitan city on conformity with the PTC or PTCM and that of the Region on the consistency between the agronomic content and the building works.^[27] Its execution is guaranteed by an agreement or unilateral undertaking, registered and transcribed at the applicant’s expense and at the municipality’s care.^[28]

The undertaking includes, among other things, the commitment to carry out the works of the programme, not to sell the land separately from the rural buildings whose productive capacity it supports (unless compensated by newly acquired land), to maintain the pertinences of buildings no longer usable for agriculture, not to change the use of the buildings needed for the farm during the validity of the programme, and to accept the penalties in the agreement.^[29] The programme lasts ten years from the municipality’s approval.^[30]

The regulation provides that the programme is presented to the municipality through the SUE, the municipal one-stop building office, also using the information system of ARTEA (the regional agency for payments in agriculture), and that the municipality requests the Region’s opinion on the form the Region supplies.^[31] The Region publishes the forms: a letter for the municipality’s request for the opinion and a template for presenting the programme (Regione Toscana page, updated 3 January 2025).^[32]

What do building works that involve a change of use require?

The law’s article on the works themselves has several main provisions. A change of agricultural use of rural buildings is allowed only if the municipal planning instruments expressly provide for and regulate it.^[33] The building works are subject to a signed agreement or unilateral undertaking, registered and transcribed by the municipality at the applicant’s expense.^[33] It identifies the pertinence areas of the buildings or single units.^[33] The works must respect the typological, formal and constructive character of buildings of historic value.^[33]

Where works involve demolishing and rebuilding agricultural structures, they cannot increase the legitimately existing buildable surface, subject to further limits in the municipal instruments.^[34] The building projects define the perimeter, size and type of the pertinence areas, consistent with the pattern of natural and man-made features of the landscape, and assign each area to a building or unit.^[35] Their total surface is the whole portion of rural territory tied to the change of use, and the commitments of environmental improvement and maintenance in the agreement fall on it.^[35]

The size of the pertinence area then matters. Where it is one hectare or more, the owners undertake in the agreement to carry out works of environmental improvement and provide suitable guarantees.^[36] If the cost of those works in the first ten years, at prices current when the title is formed, is lower than the charges set for smaller areas, the difference is due to the municipality.^[36] Where it is less than one hectare, the owners pay, in place of the agreement, charges set by the municipality for the environmental and landscape improvement of the rural territory, not lower than the maximum rate for building restructuring and not higher than the minimum rate for new building.^[37] The charges and commitments replace the urbanisation charges.^[38]

In setting the five-year strategic framework of the operational plan, municipalities take account of the buildings that changed agricultural use in the previous five years, with a count of the buildable surface deruralised (deruralizzazione is the usage for the change of a building’s use away from agriculture).^[39]

What is the legitimate use of a rural building?

The law states that the legitimate use of a building or unit is the one resulting from the documentation it names, without prejudice to its article on changes of use for buildings in the rural territory.^[40] A regional law of 2025 replaced parts of the article on legitimate use and added others, in particular on changes of use between functional categories in the urbanised zones A, B and C, and added a transitional article; the rule for buildings in the rural territory was left as stated.^[41]

The article on the 2007 line refers to the article on works without a permit where the use is varied from agricultural use in breach of it.^[16] That article is not described further here; the position of works done without the right title, and the records that show a building’s legal state, are the subject of “The Cadastre and the Building File”.

What does this article not cover?

It does not cover the municipal plans (the strategic and operational plans that decide whether a given building may change use), the provincial coordination plans that may set higher minimum areas, the tax treatment of a change of use or of rural buildings, the cadastral categories, the landscape and cultural-heritage authorisations, or the national building code’s rules on change of use.^[42] Those depend on the municipality and the property. Municipal plans, provincial coordination plans and constraints add to the regional text described here, and the position of any building depends on its own documents. On vineyards and agricultural land, see “Buying a Vineyard Estate”; on the procedures for building works, see “CILA, SCIA, Permesso di Costruire and the Landscape Authorisation”.