Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax
Consider yourself lucky that you can reliably trace land ownership for centuries. Eastern Europe went through multiple upheavals in last 100 years and every time the wheel of history turned, quite a lot of land was dispossessed/repossessed by law.In Slovakia we basically ended up with two versions of land registry (called register "C" and "E") and the ongoing effort to reconcile them. Many properties are said to be "nevysporiadané" = "not settled up" which means all the owners are not known - previous landowner died or emigrated and it waits for their descendants to claim it. It isn't possible to build anything on these lots.