There it is.

A stone house somewhere in Italy. Wooden beams, terracotta floors, a view stretching over vineyards and hills, and a price apparently borrowed from 1987.

The video lasts twenty-seven seconds.

By the end of it, you have mentally resigned from your job, packed the dog, opened a boutique guesthouse and developed a sudden interest in olive harvesting.

Seriously?

Do you genuinely believe that your investment - and, unless this is simply a holiday home, quite possibly your future life - can be assessed through an Instagram reel or a YouTube video?

Apparently, quite a few people do.

Perhaps not consciously. Nobody sits down and says: “I shall entrust my savings and the next ten years of my existence to a vertical video accompanied by Italian café music.”

And yet a remarkable number of small property transactions appear to begin precisely this way.

First comes the reel. Then the dream. Then the request for further information. Then the form asking for your name, email address, telephone number, budget, preferred region and possibly your blood type.

Finally, a link arrives. Sometimes it leads to a property. Sometimes to a webinar. Sometimes to a course explaining how to buy property in Italy. Sometimes to a paid community run by somebody whose principal experience of Italian real estate appears to consist of selling courses about Italian real estate.

And people still fall for it.

Everyone in the video wants something

Let us begin with an unfashionable question: who made the content, and why?

When the person presenting the property is trying to sell it, their interest is perfectly legitimate, but also perfectly obvious.

They want you to buy.

They are unlikely to dedicate the second episode to the irregular extension at the back, the roof “recently inspected” by the owner’s cousin, the municipal paperwork last updated during the first Berlusconi government or the fact that the nearest supermarket requires a forty-minute drive and a vehicle capable of handling roads last resurfaced by the Romans.

The reel is advertising. It may be honest advertising, but it remains advertising.

Then there is the adviser who does not sell houses but sells the method for buying houses: a course, membership, masterclass, relocation package or access to “exclusive off-market opportunities”.

Some of these services may be useful. Some may even be excellent.

But changing the product does not eliminate the sales incentive. The product may simply no longer be the house. It may be you.

Finally, there are the dream merchants: magnificent houses, extraordinary prices, carefully cropped photographs and a promise to reveal the location after registration.

Sometimes the property exists. Sometimes the price excludes nearly everything required to make it legally compliant, structurally sound or remotely habitable. Sometimes the house has already been sold, but continues to perform its more important function: persuading you to hand over your details.

Your Italian dream has entered a database.

A beautiful house is not necessarily a good investment

There is nothing wrong with falling in love with a house.

Houses are emotional objects. If they were purchased entirely through spreadsheets, nobody would ever buy a ruin, a listed building, a home with six staircases or anything located more than twenty metres from a functioning railway station.

But an emotional purchase and an investment are not the same thing.

A genuinely affordable holiday home may make perfect sense even if it never produces a significant financial return.

You use it. You enjoy it. You lend it to friends. You escape there for a few weeks every year and perhaps recover part of the cost by renting it occasionally.

Fine.

That is not necessarily an investment. It may simply be a lifestyle expense with walls.

Problems begin when the same property is described simultaneously as a bargain, a future home, a rental business, a retirement strategy and a guaranteed appreciating asset.

A house cannot become all of these things merely because the sunset looked impressive on Instagram.

If you intend to live there, you are not only buying square metres.

You are buying access to healthcare, transport, schools, shops, reliable internet, tradespeople, administrative services and some form of community.

You are buying winters as well as summers. Tuesday mornings as well as festival weekends. The road to the village when it is raining, rather than when it has been filmed by a drone.

If you intend to rent the property, you need demand rather than beauty alone.

You need to understand occupancy, seasonality, cleaning, maintenance, management, taxation, local regulations and how much money remains after everyone else has been paid.

And if you consider it an investment, you also need an exit.

Who might buy the property from you in five or ten years?

A local family?

Another foreign dreamer?

A developer?

Nobody?

Liquidity is considerably less photogenic than bougainvillea, but rather more relevant when your money is trapped in a house that attracts thousands of likes and no credible offers.

The algorithm does not know what lies behind the plaster

The principal problem with property content is not necessarily that it contains false information.

It is that it removes context. A camera shows what is visible. Due diligence is largely about what is not.

Ownership history. Mortgages. Easements. Rights of way. Planning compliance. Cadastral consistency. Structural problems. Boundaries. Shared access. Utilities. Outstanding charges. Restrictions on alterations. Inheritance complications.

And the legal status of that delightful little stone building in the garden which the seller describes as “a guest house” and the municipality may describe rather differently.

The preliminary contract is not a romantic promise made over lunch.

It is a real contract.

The notary performs essential checks and acts as an independent public official, but the notary does not replace the surveyor, architect, engineer, lawyer, accountant or tax adviser who may be required according to the property and the buyer’s circumstances.

Buying in Italy may require a small orchestra of professionals.

Instagram usually introduces you only to the lead singer.

Cheap is a price. Affordable is a calculation.

A house advertised for €60,000 does not cost €60,000.

It costs the purchase price, taxes, agency fees, notarial costs, technical checks, possible legal advice, renovation, furniture, utilities, travel, insurance, maintenance and the money you will inevitably spend after discovering that the previous owner’s definition of “fully renovated” meant “painted shortly before the photographs were taken”.

Then there is time. Time waiting for documents. Time obtaining estimates. Time coordinating builders from another country. Time discovering that the charming original floor must be lifted because the plumbing beneath it belongs in a museum.

Cheap properties can be wonderful purchases. They can also be financial sinkholes wearing geraniums. The difference rarely appears in the first video.

Use the reel. Do not let the reel use you.

None of this means that social media is useless.

Quite the opposite.

Instagram, YouTube and property portals can help buyers discover places they would never otherwise have considered. They can reveal architectural styles, introduce small villages, explain regional differences and allow people to follow renovation projects.

The danger begins when discovery quietly becomes validation.

Repeatedly seeing people buy homes in Italy does not prove that you should buy one. A thousand enthusiastic comments do not verify the paperwork. A creator’s large audience does not make them independent. And a beautifully edited renovation video rarely contains a full account of delays, mistakes, professional fees, additional works and the final cost per square metre.

Online property browsing has become entertainment and escapism as much as house hunting.

The property on the screen is no longer merely a building. It is an alternative life you can briefly inhabit without leaving the sofa.

That is harmless until the fantasy asks for a deposit.

There is another way to do this

This is also why, at , we decided not to become another estate agency with a more attractive Instagram account.

We are not agents.

We do not begin with a catalogue of properties somebody needs to sell and then attempt to persuade buyers that one of them happens to contain their future.

We begin with places.

We select villages and territories where living can make sense, where the property opportunity is real and where bringing new residents, investment and activity may contribute to something larger than the commission generated by a transaction.

Then we look for properties within those places. Not every cheap house is an opportunity. Some houses are cheap for very good reasons.

Before even presenting a property, we examine ownership, documentation, planning status, cadastral consistency, access, utilities and realistic renovation requirements.

Where irregularities can be resolved, we work to resolve them.

Where they cannot, we say so.

We involve the technicians who must verify the building, the professionals who may carry out the work and the local people capable of managing that work.

We try to turn the purchase into one coordinated process, rather than introducing the buyer to an agent, three surveyors, two contractors, a notary, an accountant, the mayor’s cousin and fifteen distant relatives who each appear to own 4.7 per cent of the roof.

This does not make old Italian buildings magically predictable.

It does, however, eliminate a considerable amount of avoidable chaos.

The prices we present are intended to be real prices.

Not spectacular numbers created to produce clicks, followed by a quiet explanation that the roof, heating, bathroom, legal regularisation, furniture and access road are all additional.

Our properties may therefore not always look like the greatest bargain ever discovered by the internet.

That is rather the point.

First choose where to live

We also insist on something that sounds obvious but is curiously absent from much property content aimed at foreign buyers.

Before choosing a house, choose where you may actually want to live.

A beautiful building is not enough.

You need to understand the village, the landscape, the distances, the climate, the winter, the services and the rhythm of daily life.

Spend time there. Buy groceries. Drive the roads. Try to obtain a coffee on a rainy Tuesday in February. Discover whether the silence feels peaceful or slightly alarming after the fourth evening.

For this reason, is developing something property sellers are rarely particularly enthusiastic about: test before you buy.

Selected properties can be rented for medium-term stays, giving prospective buyers an opportunity to experience the area before making a major commitment.

Because visiting somewhere for a weekend is not living there.

And falling in love with a place in August does not mean that you will enjoy it in January.

For properties purchased through us, we are also introducing a degree of flexibility that is unusual in the traditional market, including - within defined limits and conditions - the possibility of switching from one ITS Italy property to another.

Perhaps the house is right but the village is not.

Perhaps the village is perfect but your requirements change.

Perhaps, after six months, you discover that the idyllic isolation you requested would become considerably more idyllic with a pharmacy nearby.

Life changes.

A property model designed around people should at least attempt to recognise that.

Not just the house

Buying the building is only one part of moving to Italy.

There is taxation, legal structuring, immigration, residence permits, utilities, insurance, banking, property management and the thousand small administrative questions that nobody includes in the drone footage.

Who activates the electricity? Who arranges the internet? Who helps with the tax code, residency registration or residence permit? Who opens the property before you arrive, speaks to the plumber, receives the furniture and discovers why the boiler has chosen to display an error message in Italian at eleven o’clock at night?

These things are not glamorous. They are, however, the difference between buying a property in Italy and being able to live in one.

Our homes are therefore not conceived merely as empty buildings handed over with a set of keys and a sincere expression of encouragement.

Where appropriate, they can arrive ready to live in: furnished, equipped, connected and managed.

The cutlery is there. The internet is working. The lights come on.

Somebody knows where the water valve is.

You may wish to replace the bed linen, change the curtains or repaint the bedroom because the existing shade of green has begun to offend you personally.

But you should not need to spend the first three months discovering how to make the house function.

For many buyers, we have also added flexibility in how our services and the broader project can be paid for.

Not everyone moving country has the same financial structure, timing or liquidity. Pretending otherwise merely excludes people who may be perfectly suitable buyers and future residents.

Perhaps we should make more glamorous reels

Admittedly, this may not be the most efficient way to win the social-media game.

Perhaps we should film more sunsets.

Perhaps every property should be presented as a once-in-a-lifetime secret bargain, available only to the first seven people who enter their email address before midnight.

Perhaps we should stand inside a ruin, point enthusiastically at a collapsed ceiling and announce that, for less than the price of a garage in California, you too can own an authentic piece of Italy.

Perhaps we should sell a course teaching people how we purchased our own house, renovated it once and immediately transformed that single personal experience into universal expertise.

But buying one house does not make somebody an international property adviser. It means they bought one house.

They may have useful experience to share. They may be intelligent, honest and helpful.

But there is a considerable distance between describing your personal journey and possessing the technical, legal, fiscal and operational infrastructure required to manage somebody else’s.

Beyond that, there may be expertise. Or there may simply be smoke. Possibly from the barbecue in the garden of the house being used as the background for the next paid webinar.

The real opportunity is not the property that looks most extraordinary in a reel.

It is the property that still makes sense when the reel ends, the documents arrive, the technicians inspect it, the costs are calculated and you finally understand what living there would involve.

Instagram may help you discover Italy.

It should not be allowed to perform your due diligence.

Un editore può utilizzare una piattaforma senza consegnarle la propria indipendenza. Dopo un anno, oltre 320 mila lettori coinvolti e una fiducia seriamente compromessa, abbiamo deciso di riscoprire la separazione dei beni digitali.

Negli ultimi dodici mesi abbiamo trasferito o accompagnato su Substack diverse pubblicazioni legate al nostro ecosistema.

Le realtà direttamente riconducibili al nostro gruppo contano oggi circa 220 mila lettori registrati. A questi si aggiunge We the Italians, che abbiamo incoraggiato a seguire lo stesso percorso e che porta il perimetro complessivo oltre le 320 mila persone.

È importante precisarlo perché il racconto cambia completamente a seconda del punto di partenza.

Non siamo entrati su Substack nella speranza che la piattaforma ci costruisse un pubblico. Il pubblico esisteva già. Era stato sviluppato negli anni attraverso siti, eventi, social media, progetti editoriali, relazioni professionali e attività commerciali.

Substack ci sembrava un sistema capace di semplificare la pubblicazione e la distribuzione, riducendo almeno in parte i costi molto elevati dei servizi tradizionali di email marketing.

L’esperienza ha avuto aspetti positivi.

La leggibilità è buona. L’archivio è ordinato. Gli strumenti di pubblicazione sono generalmente efficaci. La piattaforma ha favorito l’incontro con nuovi autori e lettori.

Il problema non è la qualità del prodotto.

Il problema è il rapporto fra la piattaforma e chi vi porta una comunità già esistente.

Quando la piattaforma scambia il proprio ecosistema per il vostro progetto

Le nostre pubblicazioni non hanno mai avuto come priorità assoluta la monetizzazione diretta.

Offriamo sottoscrizioni a pagamento, ma le consideriamo soprattutto una forma di sostegno volontario. Non vogliamo trasformare ogni contenuto in un prodotto accessibile soltanto dietro pagamento.

Allo stesso modo, non abbiamo costruito la nostra strategia attorno a Notes. Molti lettori preferiscono ricevere una newsletter, aprirla nella propria casella di posta e leggerla senza partecipare continuamente alla vita interna di una piattaforma.

Dal punto di vista editoriale, è un comportamento perfettamente normale.

Dal punto di vista di una piattaforma interessata a sviluppare engagement, transazioni e permanenza interna, può invece apparire poco virtuoso.

È qui che gli interessi iniziano a divergere.

Substack ha il diritto di promuovere il proprio modello: abbonamenti a pagamento, Notes, raccomandazioni e strumenti di scoperta interna. Gli editori hanno però lo stesso diritto di considerare Substack uno dei tanti canali a disposizione, non il centro inevitabile della propria attività.

Il rapporto diventa problematico quando questa differenza non viene riconosciuta.

La questione più grave: il modo in cui siamo stati trattati

Nel corso degli ultimi mesi abbiamo ricevuto comunicazioni e affrontato procedure relative ai lettori considerati poco attivi, alla necessità di riconfermare determinate iscrizioni e alla gestione di alcuni status gratuiti o vitalizi.

Non intendiamo discutere pubblicamente ogni dettaglio tecnico, anche perché sistemi di questa dimensione hanno inevitabilmente regole, controlli e necessità operative.

La nostra delusione riguarda soprattutto il metodo.

Decisioni capaci di incidere su pubblicazioni con decine di migliaia di utenti sono state comunicate senza un confronto preventivo che noi ritenessimo adeguato.

Non abbiamo percepito una particolare attenzione alla scala delle nostre attività, alla provenienza degli utenti o al lavoro necessario per costruire e trasferire quei database.

Siamo stati trattati come se fossimo piccoli creator alle prime armi, arrivati sulla piattaforma nella speranza di ottenere visibilità.

Non è una questione di orgoglio.

È una questione di corretta gestione della relazione commerciale.

Le realtà direttamente collegate a noi contano circa 220 mila registrati. Includendo We the Italians, il perimetro supera i 320 mila. Un interlocutore con questi numeri non pretende privilegi, ma può ragionevolmente aspettarsi attenzione, dialogo e una valutazione meno impersonale.

Il risultato economico e operativo

Secondo le nostre stime interne, potremmo aver perso fra le 10 e le 12 mila iscrizioni provenienti dai database originariamente portati da noi.

I lettori realmente acquisiti grazie all’ecosistema Substack potrebbero essere circa duemila.

Si tratta di stime, non di dati sottoposti a revisione indipendente. Tuttavia, anche riconoscendo un margine d’errore significativo, il saldo resta poco convincente.

Oggi prevediamo che meno di un terzo dei nostri 220 mila lettori rimarrà stabilmente su Substack.

Continueremo quindi a inviare le newsletter attraverso più canali: database diretti, LinkedIn, siti proprietari e servizi professionali di distribuzione.

Questo comporterà maggiori costi e più lavoro.

Comporterà però anche una maggiore resilienza.

Il nostro divorzio all’italiana digitale

Non stiamo annunciando l’abbandono di Substack.

Continueremo a pubblicare sulla piattaforma, a utilizzare l’archivio e a mantenere il rapporto con la community incontrata qui.

Ma il rapporto cambia.

Potremmo definirlo un moderno divorzio all’italiana: nessun dramma e nessun cadavere, soltanto una rigorosa separazione dei beni digitali.

Creeremo backup indipendenti.

Manterremo e rafforzeremo i database proprietari.

Non inviteremo più automaticamente i lettori provenienti dagli altri nostri canali a registrarsi su Substack.

Valuteremo liberamente piattaforme alternative e nuovi strumenti di distribuzione.

Substack resterà una piattaforma utile. Non sarà più l’infrastruttura alla quale affidare in via principale il rapporto con il pubblico.

Una lezione utile per editori e creator

Le piattaforme sono strumenti straordinari, ma possiedono obiettivi propri.

La loro crescita può coincidere con quella di un editore per un certo periodo. Non è detto che la coincidenza duri per sempre.

Per questa ragione, ogni progetto editoriale dovrebbe mantenere:

• un archivio indipendente;

• un accesso diretto al proprio database;

• più canali di distribuzione;

• procedure regolari di backup;

• una chiara distinzione tra la propria community e gli utenti di una piattaforma.

I lettori non appartengono né agli editori né alle piattaforme. Ma la relazione costruita con loro ha un valore che non dovrebbe dipendere interamente dalle decisioni di un singolo intermediario.

Substack resta un ottimo prodotto.

Il nostro giudizio sul prodotto non cambia.

È cambiata, profondamente, la fiducia nel rapporto.

Avevamo presentato Substack a partner e collaboratori come una soluzione da privilegiare. In futuro non lo faremo più. Lo proporremo come una delle opzioni, ricordando a tutti di conservare altrove la parte più preziosa del proprio lavoro.

Non è una rappresaglia.

È la normale conseguenza di una delusione commerciale.

Substack, è stato bello.

Possiamo continuare a frequentarci.

Ma da oggi vediamo anche altre persone.

Substack, It Was Good While It Lasted. But We Should Start Seeing Other Platforms.

A publisher can use a platform without surrendering its independence. After one year, an ecosystem of more than 320,000 readers and a serious loss of trust, we are rediscovering the virtues of digital separation of assets.

Over the past twelve months, we have moved or encouraged several publications within our wider editorial ecosystem to establish a presence on Substack.

The publications directly connected to our businesses now have approximately 220,000 registered readers. In addition, we encouraged We the Italians to follow the same route, bringing the wider audience involved to more than 320,000 people.

This distinction matters because the story changes considerably depending on the starting point.

We did not join Substack hoping that the platform would create an audience for us. The audience already existed. It had been developed over many years through websites, events, social media, editorial projects, professional relationships and commercial activity.

Substack appeared capable of simplifying publishing and distribution while reducing at least some of the considerable cost associated with traditional email marketing services.

There have been positive aspects.

The reading experience is good. The archive is well organised. The publishing tools are generally effective. The platform has also introduced us to interesting writers and readers.

The problem is not the quality of the product.

The problem lies in the relationship between the platform and publishers who bring an established community with them.

When a platform mistakes its ecosystem for your editorial project

Direct monetisation has never been the sole priority of our publications.

We offer paid subscriptions, but primarily as a voluntary form of support. We do not wish to place every article behind a paywall or pressure every reader to become a paying customer.

Similarly, we have not built our editorial strategy around Notes. Many readers prefer to receive a newsletter, open it in their inbox and read it without participating continuously in a platform’s internal social environment.

From an editorial perspective, this is entirely normal behaviour.

From the perspective of a platform seeking greater engagement, transactions and internal activity, it may appear less desirable.

This is where the interests begin to diverge.

Substack is entitled to promote its preferred model: paid subscriptions, Notes, recommendations and internal discovery. Publishers are equally entitled to regard Substack as one distribution channel among several rather than the inevitable centre of their operations.

The relationship becomes difficult when that distinction is not properly recognised.

The central issue: how we were treated

Over recent months, we have received communications and encountered procedures concerning readers regarded as inactive, the reconfirmation of certain subscriptions and the management of some complimentary or lifetime statuses.

We do not intend to litigate every technical detail in public. Platforms of this size inevitably require rules, controls and operational processes.

Our disappointment primarily concerns the method.

Decisions capable of affecting publications with tens of thousands of users were communicated without what we considered an adequate prior conversation.

We saw little recognition of the scale of our activities, the origin of the audiences or the work required to build and migrate those databases.

We felt treated as though we were inexperienced creators who had joined the platform hoping to obtain their first meaningful exposure.

This is not a matter of wounded pride.

It is a matter of managing a commercial relationship appropriately.

The publications directly connected to us have approximately 220,000 registered readers. Including We the Italians, the wider ecosystem exceeds 320,000. An organisation operating at that scale does not require special treatment, but it can reasonably expect dialogue, attention and a less impersonal assessment.

The commercial and operational outcome

According to our internal estimates, we may have lost between 10,000 and 12,000 subscriptions from the audiences we originally brought into the migration.

The number of genuinely new readers acquired through Substack’s own ecosystem may be approximately 2,000.

These are estimates rather than independently audited figures. Even allowing for a significant margin of error, however, the balance remains unconvincing.

We currently expect fewer than one third of our 220,000 readers to remain permanently on Substack.

We will therefore continue distributing our newsletters through several channels: direct databases, LinkedIn, proprietary websites and professional email services.

This will mean additional cost and work.

It will also mean greater resilience.

Our digital Italian divorce

We are not announcing a complete departure from Substack.

We will continue publishing on the platform, using the archive and maintaining our relationship with the community we encountered here.

The nature of the relationship is changing.

It may be described as a modern Italian divorce: no melodrama and no casualties, merely a strict separation of digital assets.

We will maintain independent backups.

We will strengthen our proprietary databases.

We will no longer automatically direct readers from our other channels towards Substack registration.

We will freely evaluate alternative platforms and distribution tools.

Substack will remain useful. It will no longer be the primary infrastructure entrusted with our audience relationship.

A useful lesson for publishers and creators

Platforms are powerful tools, but they have objectives of their own.

Their growth may coincide with that of a publisher for a period. There is no guarantee that the alignment will last indefinitely.

Every editorial project should therefore maintain:

• an independent archive;

• direct access to its database;

• multiple distribution channels;

• regular backup procedures;

• a clear distinction between its own community and the users of a particular platform.

Readers do not belong to publishers or platforms. However, the relationship built with them has value and should not depend entirely on the decisions of one intermediary.

Substack remains an excellent product.

Our view of the product has not fundamentally changed.

Our trust in the relationship has.

We previously presented Substack to partners and collaborators as a preferred solution. We will no longer do so. We will describe it as one option among several and advise everyone to retain independent control of the most valuable part of their work.

This is not retaliation.

It is the ordinary consequence of commercial disappointment.

Substack, it was good while it lasted.

We can continue seeing each other.

But from now on, we are also seeing other platforms.

Inevitably, however, every genuine trend must also produce instant experts, miraculous properties and someone selling access to the “real Italy” six months after discovering it.

A recent article in The Independent examines the growing number of Americans choosing to live abroad and the apparent change in their demographic profile. The familiar retired couple looking for sunshine and a lower cost of living has not disappeared, but it is increasingly being joined by younger professionals, parents with children and families questioning whether the American version of prosperity is still delivering a particularly prosperous life. They are worried about healthcare costs, childcare, university fees, political polarisation and school safety; many are exhausted by a working culture that continues to offer higher salaries while finding ever more inventive ways to consume them.

For those of us who work every day between Italy and the United States, none of this is especially surprising. We see the enquiries, the exploratory visits, the property searches, the citizenship applications, the questions about schools, healthcare and taxation, and the slightly bewildered discovery that moving to Italy involves rather more than choosing between Tuscany and Puglia. What the international press has recently identified as a trend is something we have watched develop for years: Americans are not merely dreaming about leaving, but increasingly turning that dream into a practical project.

Precisely how many Americans live outside the United States remains difficult to establish, largely because the country does not maintain a comprehensive register of its citizens abroad. The US Federal Voting Assistance Program estimated that 3.3 million American citizens were living overseas in 2024, of whom approximately 2.2 million were of voting age. The Association of Americans Resident Overseas, using a different methodology, puts the figure at 5.5 million. The gap is substantial, but it does not invalidate the phenomenon; it demonstrates how difficult it is to count a population that includes registered residents, dual nationals, temporary workers, students, families, retirees and people who divide their lives between two countries.

The Italian figures are smaller, naturally, but no less revealing. On 1 January 2025, Italy officially recorded 17,650 residents with US citizenship, an increase of 6.7 per cent in a single year. Lazio, Lombardy and Tuscany continue to host the largest American populations, but the fastest growth is not confined to the usual international centres: the number of American residents rose by 26 per cent in Sicily, 18.2 per cent in Abruzzo, 13.9 per cent in Sardinia and 11.5 per cent in Calabria. These statistics count citizenship rather than cultural identity and therefore omit, among others, many Italian-American dual citizens; they should not be mistaken for a complete census of everyone who has recently arrived from the United States. Even so, the direction of travel is difficult to miss.

There are good reasons for it. Italy can offer a different relationship with time, public space, food, family and community, as well as healthcare and university costs that appear almost fictional to many Americans. A family may be able to buy a home in an Italian town for a fraction of what it would cost in Boston, New York or California, while a professional able to work remotely can combine an American income with a European lifestyle. Retirees may find that their savings stretch further, particularly outside the famous cities and heavily marketed areas, and Italy has introduced fiscal regimes capable of making relocation especially attractive to certain new residents.

This does not mean that Italy is cheap everywhere, administratively simple or automatically suitable for everyone. Milan is not rural Abruzzo, Florence is not Calabria and spending three glorious weeks in a medieval village in June is not the same as living there through a damp February when the nearest supermarket is twenty kilometres away and the last bus departed during the Renzi government. Moving to Italy can be a life-changing decision, but life-changing is not necessarily synonymous with easy, inexpensive or sensible.

And it is at this point that the relocation circus enters, carrying a ring light, an affiliate link and a downloadable guide to the ten Italian villages that nobody else knows about.

Every significant migration trend creates an industry around it. Some of that industry is professional, necessary and extremely useful. Moving between the United States and Italy can involve immigration law, two tax systems, property law, inheritance rules, residency requirements, healthcare registration, business structures and financial planning. Serious relocation advisers understand the limits of their own expertise and work with qualified lawyers, accountants, notaries, surveyors, architects and licensed real-estate professionals.

Others appear to acquire all these qualifications through the transformative experience of having moved themselves.

An American relocates to Puglia, negotiates a broadband contract, successfully obtains a codice fiscale and, within a few months, begins advising other Americans on visas, property, tax residence and the strategic organisation of their worldwide assets. A personal blog becomes a newsletter, the newsletter becomes a consultancy and the consultancy soon offers exclusive properties that cannot be found “on the normal market”, usually because the normal market has been unsuccessfully trying to sell them for the previous four years.

Personal experience can be enormously valuable, but it is not the same as professional competence. Explaining how you obtained your residency card is one thing; advising another person on their legal right to remain in Italy is another. Recommending a town you enjoy is perfectly legitimate; taking money to broker property transactions may involve rather more than enthusiasm and an Instagram account. Describing your own tax arrangements does not qualify you to design those of a family with companies, investments, trusts, pensions and continuing obligations in the United States.

The distinction becomes conveniently blurred because the market is large and the audience is eager. Many prospective movers are not merely purchasing information; they are purchasing reassurance. They want someone who speaks their language, understands their anxieties and tells them that the Italian life they have imagined is achievable. This creates an inevitable temptation to simplify the unpleasant parts, exaggerate the opportunities and convert one personal success story into a universally applicable method.

There is also a relentless demand for new content. A relocation newsletter cannot simply say, week after week, that Italy is complicated, individual circumstances vary and readers should obtain independent professional advice. It needs discoveries, secrets, bargains and urgency. It needs the village “nobody is talking about”, the visa “Americans are only now discovering” and the property opportunity that apparently remained hidden from the Italian population until an expat from Connecticut arrived and recognised its true potential.

The one-euro-house phenomenon is the perfect example. The schemes themselves are real, and some have generated useful attention for towns affected by abandonment and depopulation. But the euro is a symbolic purchase price attached to a property requiring work, technical assessments, professional assistance, compliance with deadlines and, frequently, substantial renovation. Calling it a one-euro house is technically correct in approximately the same way that describing a free puppy as a free animal is technically correct: it is the acquisition that costs almost nothing, not the years that follow.

Yet the headline persists because “Municipality Offers Derelict Building Subject to Renovation Obligations and Uncertain Final Costs” does not inspire quite the same number of clicks.

The old warning for foreigners buying in Italy was to beware of the charming local fixer, the proverbial Mario who knew the mayor, the surveyor, the notary and, by an astonishing coincidence, the owner of precisely the house you should buy. Mario has not necessarily disappeared, and he may still be waiting to introduce you to a panoramic property whose roof enjoys a more independent lifestyle than its occupants. But he is no longer the only danger.

Today, the person selling the dubious “hidden gem” may be another American who arrived shortly before you did, purchased a property without entirely understanding it and has now decided that the most efficient exit strategy is to sell both the house and the story to the next arrival. Shared nationality creates familiarity; it does not create structural integrity, legal compliance or an accurate cadastral plan.

Indeed, only a particular form of optimism would encourage someone to purchase a house thousands of miles away after viewing a vertical video, reassured by the fact that the presenter also grew up in New Jersey, and investigate the damp, access rights and unauthorised extension only after the money has been transferred. Yet it happens, because the dream is powerful, the price appears irresistible and the fear of missing out is carefully cultivated.

This should not become an argument against relocation advisers, expat publications or people sharing their experiences. There is room for everyone, particularly in a market whose scale is already significant and still growing. Some newcomers will create excellent services, develop genuine local knowledge and build useful bridges between foreign residents and Italian communities. Blogs and newsletters can help people avoid mistakes, discover less obvious places and understand aspects of daily life that no official government website will ever explain coherently.

Others will enjoy a brief firework of visibility before discovering that recycling the same list of affordable Italian villages is not a long-term business model. That too is part of the market. The problem is not that people monetise their knowledge or their audience; the problem begins when limited knowledge is presented as expertise, advertising is disguised as independent advice, or personal enthusiasm crosses into legal, fiscal and property guidance that the person concerned is neither qualified nor authorised to provide.

The growth in Americans moving abroad is therefore real, not merely another media invention. The figures are substantial, the reasons are serious and the demographic is broader than before. Italy will continue to attract Americans looking for safety, community, beauty, cultural depth and a version of everyday life less dominated by cost, work and permanent anxiety.

But Italy is a country, not a lifestyle package, and relocating here is not an extended holiday with better tomatoes. It requires planning, independent verification and a willingness to distinguish the dream from the transaction used to sell it. It means understanding the visa before buying the house, the tax consequences before moving the money and the actual town before imagining a future in it. It also means checking whether the person giving legal, financial or property advice is legally entitled and professionally qualified to do so.

Americans are moving abroad in impressive numbers, and many will build happier lives because of it. We are not surprised; we encounter them and their ambitions every day. We would merely suggest that they bring their optimism, their documents, an independent surveyor and a healthy suspicion not only of the charming Mario waiting beside the village bar, but also of the friendly American cousin who moved to Italy last Thursday and launched his relocation consultancy on Friday.

Esco quando voglio

Lo Stato ha un patrimonio enorme. Ora deve riuscire a usarlo.

Il Rapporto 2026 dell’Agenzia del Demanio mette sul tavolo 5,1 miliardi di euro di investimenti e 37 Piani Città. La vera sfida, tuttavia, non consiste nell’annunc…

Read more

6 days ago · Matteo Cerri

The Italian State Property Agency manages 45,415 assets worth an estimated €63.2 billion and reports €5.1 billion in investments activated since 2022, although only around one fifth has so far been completed. Its 37 “City Plans” cover 439 properties, 5.1 million square metres of buildings and extensive green areas, with projects ranging from former prisons and military barracks to hospitals, cultural sites and student accommodation. The strategy could reduce public-sector rents, limit further land consumption and bring abandoned areas back into daily urban life. Its credibility, however, will ultimately depend less on projected economic impacts than on implementation, transparent timelines and the long-term management of the regenerated properties.

Negli ultimi anni, il rapporto tra l’Italia e gli italiani all’estero, in particolare con il mondo italoamericano, è cambiato profondamente.

Non si tratta più soltanto di turismo delle radici, vacanze estive, memoria familiare o seconde case acquistate per nostalgia. Sempre più spesso, l’Italia diventa una scelta concreta: un luogo in cui vivere per alcuni mesi all’anno, investire, restaurare una casa, costruire una nuova routine, avviare un progetto personale o, semplicemente, ripensare il proprio rapporto con il tempo, la comunità e la qualità della vita.

È da questa trasformazione che nasce l’intervista realizzata da Umberto Mucci per We the Italians a Matteo Cerri, co-founder di ITS ITALY.

Vai all'intervista integrale

L’intervista parte da un fenomeno ormai evidente: il crescente numero di stranieri, soprattutto americani e italoamericani, interessati all’acquisto di immobili in Italia. Ma la conversazione va subito oltre il tema immobiliare.

Perché, come Matteo spiega nell’intervista, ITS ITALY non nasce come semplice progetto real estate. Nasce più di dieci anni fa a Londra come piattaforma editoriale, culturale e comunitaria per raccontare l’Italia a chi la guarda da fuori: non attraverso cartoline, folklore o retorica da esportazione, ma con uno sguardo più pratico, internazionale e spesso più schietto.

Dopo il Covid, quella visione si è trasformata in qualcosa di più operativo. Non bastava più promuovere l’Italia. Bisognava aiutare persone, famiglie e investitori a capire come un interesse per il Paese potesse diventare presenza reale, vita, recupero di immobili, rigenerazione di borghi e impatto positivo sulle comunità locali.

Uno dei passaggi centrali dell’intervista è il principio che Matteo riassume con una formula semplice: live first, buy later.

Vivere prima, comprare dopo.

Non significa non comprare. Significa comprare meglio. Significa non trasformare tre giorni di sole, due cene perfette e una passeggiata in un borgo da cartolina in una decisione immobiliare presa troppo in fretta.

Vivere un luogo per qualche mese permette di capire se quel paese funziona davvero tutto l’anno, se la distanza dall’aeroporto è sostenibile, se i servizi sono adeguati, se il silenzio è pace o isolamento, se la ristrutturazione è un progetto reale o solo una bella frase da raccontare agli amici.

L’intervista affronta anche uno dei temi più discussi degli ultimi anni: le case a un euro.

Matteo riconosce il grande merito di queste iniziative: hanno acceso i riflettori internazionali su luoghi che altrimenti sarebbero rimasti fuori dalla conversazione globale. Ma, allo stesso tempo, chiarisce un punto essenziale: attenzione mediatica e rigenerazione non sono la stessa cosa.

Una campagna può portare visitatori, giornalisti e curiosità. Non può, da sola, ristrutturare case, creare lavoro, rafforzare servizi, formare artigiani o ricostruire una comunità.

La rigenerazione, nella visione di ITS ITALY, non comincia dagli edifici. Comincia dalle persone.

Una casa restaurata e usata due settimane l’anno può essere bella, ma difficilmente cambia il destino di un luogo. Un progetto diventa davvero significativo quando chi arriva vive, partecipa, investe tempo, porta relazioni, utilizza servizi, invita altre persone, costruisce un rapporto con la comunità locale.

Per questo, il motto di ITS ITALY, Don’t just visit, belong, non è soltanto una frase evocativa.

È un metodo.

Non limitarsi a visitare l’Italia. Non comprarne semplicemente un frammento. Ma provare ad appartenerle, con rispetto, intelligenza e consapevolezza.

Nell’intervista, Matteo parla anche del rapporto speciale con gli italoamericani. Per molti di loro, l’Italia non è solo una destinazione. È un luogo emotivo, familiare, identitario. Ma proprio per questo va affrontato con delicatezza.

L’Italia reale non coincide sempre con l’Italia conservata nei ricordi di famiglia. Questo non rende il percorso meno interessante. Al contrario, lo rende più profondo. Passare dalla memoria alla realtà significa incontrare un Paese vivo, complesso, generoso, contraddittorio e molto più ricco di qualsiasi immagine idealizzata.

Al termine della conversazione, Umberto Mucci ha definito l’intervista una delle più schiette e ricche di contenuti realizzate da tempo. Per Matteo, è stato probabilmente il complimento più importante: non perché l’obiettivo fosse provocare, ma perché parlare dell’Italia oggi richiede chiarezza.

Entusiasmo, sì. Ma anche concretezza.

Sogno, certamente. Ma anche numeri, tempi, costi, rischi, burocrazia, manutenzione, comunità, accessibilità e vita quotidiana.

Per ITS Journal, questa intervista rappresenta bene il senso del lavoro che ITS ITALY porta avanti da anni: raccontare l’Italia non come un prodotto da consumare, ma come una relazione da costruire.

Con una piccola nota finale, inevitabile: Matteo si è permesso di aggiornare la foto dell’intervista. Ufficialmente per ragioni grafiche. Ufficiosamente perché la precedente immagine era abbastanza severa da giustificare un modesto atto di autodifesa estetica.

Matteo Cerri Speaks to We the Italians About ITS ITALY, Italian Americans and the Difference Between Visiting Italy and Belonging to It

In recent years, the relationship between Italy and the Italian diaspora, especially in the United States, has changed profoundly.

It is no longer only about roots tourism, summer holidays, family memories or second homes bought for sentimental reasons. Increasingly, Italy is becoming a concrete life choice: a place where people want to spend part of the year, invest, restore a property, create a new routine, reconnect with family history or rethink their relationship with time, community and quality of life.

This transformation is at the centre of the interview conducted by Umberto Mucci for We the Italians with Matteo Cerri, co-founder of ITS ITALY.

The interview begins with a visible trend: the growing number of foreigners, particularly Americans and Italian Americans, interested in buying homes in Italy. But the conversation quickly moves beyond real estate.

As Matteo explains, ITS ITALY did not begin as a property project. It was born more than ten years ago in London as an editorial, cultural and community platform created to speak about Italy to people looking at the country from abroad — not through postcards, folklore or export-ready clichés, but with a more practical, international and often more direct perspective.

After Covid, that vision became more operational. Simply promoting Italy was no longer enough. There was a more tangible opportunity: helping people, families and investors understand how their interest in Italy could become real presence, restored homes, local regeneration and positive impact on communities.

One of the central ideas in the interview is a principle Matteo often repeats: live first, buy later.

It does not mean “do not buy”. It means buy better.

It means not turning three days of sunshine, two perfect dinners and a beautiful walk through a hilltop town into a major real estate decision made too quickly.

Living in a place for a few months changes everything. It helps people understand whether a town works all year round, whether the distance from the airport is sustainable, whether essential services are available, whether silence feels peaceful or isolating, and whether restoring an old Italian house is a real project or simply a wonderful phrase to say out loud.

The interview also addresses one of the most discussed Italian phenomena of recent years: one-euro homes.

Matteo recognises their important role. They have brought international attention to towns that might otherwise have remained outside the global conversation. At the same time, he makes a crucial distinction: media attention and regeneration are not the same thing.

A campaign can attract visitors, journalists and curiosity. It cannot, on its own, renovate houses, create jobs, strengthen services, train artisans or rebuild a community.

In the vision of ITS ITALY, regeneration does not begin with buildings. It begins with people.

A restored house used for two weeks a year may be beautiful, but it rarely changes the destiny of a place. A project becomes meaningful when those who arrive live there, participate, invest time, build relationships, use local services, invite others and create a genuine connection with the community.

This is why the ITS ITALY motto, Don’t just visit, belong, is not simply an evocative phrase.

It is a method.

Do not merely visit Italy. Do not simply buy a fragment of it. Try to belong to it, with respect, intelligence and awareness.

In the interview, Matteo also discusses the special relationship with Italian Americans. For many of them, Italy is not just a destination. It is an emotional, familial and identity-based geography. Precisely for this reason, it must be approached with care.

The real Italy does not always match the Italy preserved in family memories. That does not make the journey less interesting. On the contrary, it makes it deeper. Moving from memory to reality means encountering a living country: complex, generous, contradictory and far richer than any idealised image.

At the end of the conversation, Umberto Mucci described the interview as one of the frankest and most content-rich he had conducted in a long time. For Matteo, this was perhaps the most meaningful compliment: not because the aim was to provoke, but because speaking about Italy today requires clarity.

Enthusiasm, yes. But also concreteness.

Dream, certainly. But also numbers, timelines, costs, risks, bureaucracy, maintenance, communities, accessibility and everyday life.

For ITS Journal, this interview captures the essence of the work ITS ITALY has been carrying out for years: telling the story of Italy not as a product to be consumed, but as a relationship to be built.

With one final, unavoidable note: Matteo did take the liberty of updating the photograph used for the interview. Officially, for graphic reasons. Unofficially, because the previous image was severe enough to justify a modest act of aesthetic self-defence.

Please enjoy the audio and visual preview of this interview here:
https://lnkd.in/dCC4GgRm

As long as it does not become yet another HBO postcard with exposed beams, lemons, grandmothers, one-euro houses and nostalgia in tomato sauce.

According to Variety, David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, is considering a new television or film project about four Italian Americans who move to Italy and buy property in the “old country”. The idea, mentioned during a public conversation at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, taps into a real and increasingly visible phenomenon: Americans, many of them with Italian roots, looking at Italy not simply as a holiday destination or a family memory, but as a possible place to live, invest, start again, retire, work remotely or, at the very least, breathe a little differently.

You can read the ‘original’ Italian version of this article on ‘Esco quando voglio’

Dear Mr Chase,

May I call you David?

Actually, perhaps not. There is always the risk that somewhere in New Jersey someone still believes respect begins with a surname and ends with a very serious conversation in front of a tray of baked ziti.

So, Mr Chase.

I read that you might like to make a film, or perhaps a television series, about four Italian Americans who buy property in Italy and return to the “old country”: that mysterious ancestral place which, for many Americans of Italian descent, is at once a real country, a family mythology, a sepia photograph on a sideboard, a grandmother who would never forgive supermarket sauce, and a geographical confusion in which Naples, Sicily, Molise and “somewhere near Rome” often end up in the same emotional drawer.

The idea is wonderful.

Truly.

Not because I wish to flatter the man who did more for the Italian American imagination than most tourist boards, restaurant chains and family therapists combined. Not because The Sopranos turned a very specific corner of New Jersey into one of the great psychological landscapes of modern television. And not because Italian Americans moving to Italy is suddenly fashionable enough to deserve the usual treatment: a Vespa, a lemon tree, a table in a piazza, an elderly woman making pasta and a golden retriever called Dante.

The idea is wonderful because, finally, someone seems to have understood that the story of Italian Americans does not have to be told, yet again, through organised crime, second-generation trauma, Sunday lunch, the overbearing mother, the cousin who knows a guy, the butcher’s shop with a suspicious back room, the red-and-white checked tablecloth and the unavoidable line delivered in a Little Italy accent by a character born in suburban New Jersey who works in private equity.

But precisely because the idea is so good, one must be careful.

Very careful.

The danger is not artistic risk. Artistic risk would be welcome. The real danger is the updated cliché: no longer the Italian American in a vest and gold chain saying “mamma mia” in front of a bowl of spaghetti, but the Italian American in a linen shirt, Panama hat and Instagram account called “Our Little Tuscan Dream”, who buys a one-euro house in an “undiscovered” village, discovers that the roof will cost €180,000, argues with three surveyors, two cousins of the seller and a municipal planning office open only on Tuesdays from 10.12 to 10.47, and gradually realises that the real mafia was never the one in the films, but the building quote sent on WhatsApp with no VAT, no date and no shame.

That is the series.

Not the romantic return to the land of the ancestors.

Not the postcard with the Vespa, the sunset and the glass of wine overlooking a hill which, in the meantime, the neighbour has already promised to sell to a German.

The real story is much funnier, crueller, warmer and more contemporary than that: thousands of Americans, many of them with Italian origins that are genuine, presumed, reconstructed, dreamt of or certified by a great-grandfather born in the province of Avellino in 1898, are looking at Italy not as a genealogical museum, but as a possible way out. Out of American anxiety. Out of the cost of living. Out of healthcare as an extreme sport. Out of screaming politics. Out of suburban loneliness. Out of the feeling that the American promise, for many people, has become a premium subscription with fewer and fewer services included.

And Italy, with all its defects, has suddenly become an answer again.

Not always the right answer.
Not always the easy answer.
But a possible answer.

That is where the real narrative material begins.

Because the Italy these Americans discover is not the Italy they inherited through family stories. It is not the still, sacred country of the grandmother. It is not a permanent nativity scene. It is not a theme park of roots. It is not the “old country” patiently waiting to be rediscovered by four emotional grandchildren with blue passports and an alarming confidence in their pronunciation of bruschetta.

Contemporary Italy is alive, complicated, seductive, maddening, beautiful and administratively sadistic. It is a place where you can have the best lunch of your life for eighteen euros and then lose six months trying to understand why the local authority cannot find a floor plan. It is a country where a depopulated village may indeed offer you a house at a symbolic price, but will then, quite reasonably, ask you to restore it, respect planning restrictions, file paperwork, pay professionals and understand the difference between habitability, compliance, cadastral status, planning status, residence, domicile and that mysterious Italian zone of existence in which everything “can be done” until you ask someone to put it in writing.

It is a country where an American arrives thinking he has to learn Italian and discovers that the first real language to learn is surveyorese.

An ancient tongue, harder than Latin, based on expressions such as “we need to see what is registered at the Comune”, “cadastrally it is one thing, urbanistically another”, “the file is almost ready”, “we only need one signature”, “the technician is on holiday” and “we’ll update each other after Ferragosto”, which in Italy means a period somewhere between 16 August and the moral end of Western civilisation.

And yet, precisely there, in that friction between dream and reality, heritage and bureaucracy, nostalgia and Google Translate, the promise of a slower life and the discovery that slowness too has a competent office, there is an enormous story.

Not a story about Italian Americans going back.

A story about Italian Americans going forward.

Because the word “return” is already a trap. You return to a place you know. You return to a home waiting for you. You return to something that has stood still while you were elsewhere. But those arriving in Italy today from the United States, even when they have an Italian surname, even when they have obtained citizenship by descent, even when they know how to cook their grandmother’s meatballs and weep over a great-grandfather’s birth certificate, are not really returning.

They are arriving.

And arriving is far more interesting than returning.

Arriving means discovering that real Italy coincides neither with American nostalgia nor with Italian cynicism. That it is not all dolce vita, but it is not merely decline either. That villages are not abandoned film sets waiting for a foreign protagonist, but often fragile, suspicious, generous, wounded communities full of memory and practical problems. That buying a house does not mean buying belonging. That the country does not need yet another foreigner in love with the view, but people capable of staying, investing, understanding, respecting, participating, paying taxes and repairing roofs without turning every wall into “authentic rustic chic” for Airbnb.

And here, Mr Chase, one must be even more careful.

Because when Hollywood sees Italy, it often loses all glycaemic control. Cue the music. Enter the market. An old woman kneads something. A priest crosses the square. A moustached man says something wise. An American woman rediscovers herself thanks to a plate of pasta, an emotionally available builder or an inherited property which, in real life, would be blocked by seven co-heirs, two mortgages and a succession file left unresolved since 1974.

Enough.

Really, enough.

Italy does not need another story in which the country functions as low-cost therapy for exhausted Americans. And Italian Americans do not need another story in which their identity is reduced to sauce, blood, saints, surname and a few Italian words pronounced with the serene authority of someone who has never had to face a tobacconist in order to buy a revenue stamp.

What is interesting today is far more adult.

It is the meeting of two crises.

On one side, America, with part of its professional and middle class looking outwards not for tourism, but for possibility. On the other, Italy, with whole territories full of empty houses, closing schools, local economies to revive, communities that would like new residents but do not always know how to welcome them, and a public machine capable of simultaneously desiring foreign investment and discouraging it with paperwork that appears to have been written by Franz Kafka after a long condominium meeting.

In the middle are the Americans who arrive.

Some have money, others do not. Some are looking for a peaceful retirement, others want to work remotely. Some pursue Italian citizenship as destiny, others simply want to live somewhere where bread tastes like bread and not like morally responsible foam. Some idealise Italy in a way that is both touching and unbearable. Others arrive prepared, study, ask questions, compare, understand that Milan is not a village, that Tuscany is not automatically affordable, that the South is not one single sunset, and that living in a historic centre is delightful until you have to carry a washing machine up three flights of medieval stairs designed when the main logistics provider was a mule.

Some make it.

Some run away.

Some stay and become more Italian than the Italians, which means they begin complaining about everything with great competence, while having absolutely no intention of leaving.

That is the material.

Forget “four Italian Americans in the land of their ancestors”.

Try four people who think they are buying a house and discover they have purchased an identity crisis with a panoramic view.

Four people who arrive with the idea of the “old country” and find a new country: more global, more contradictory, more fragile, more interesting. A country where a Calabrian village can speak to Brooklyn, a retired man from New Jersey can bring an Abruzzese house back to life, a designer from San Francisco can fall in love with the Marche and then go mad because fibre broadband reaches the square but not her desk, a former executive can reinvent himself in Puglia and discover that the real culture shock is not lunch at two o’clock, but the fact that the accountant does not answer emails with the urgency he spent thirty years expecting from Slack.

And then there is the work I do every day.

Yes, I know. This is the part where the article risks becoming self-promotional. So let me say it badly, in order to keep it elegant.

Mr Chase, before this story is handed to someone who thinks “moving to Italy” means lining up a grandmother, a Vespa, a one-euro house and a man called Giuseppe who fixes everything with a smile, it might be useful to speak with people who actually see this happen. Not from an academic observatory, not from a real estate agency disguised as poetry, not from the marketing office of a municipality that has recently discovered Canva, but from inside that strange, growing, often chaotic and very concrete flow connecting Italians abroad, Italian descendants, Americans in love with Italy, professionals escaping hyper-productivity, curious retirees, cautious investors, families looking for another rhythm, villages hoping to come back to life and territories that do not want to become mere scenery for the next reel.

Through ITS Italy, ITS Journal, Esco Quando Voglio, We the Italians and the whole ecosystem around these conversations, I have not been looking at this phenomenon since yesterday morning because Variety published an article. I have been intercepting it for years: through readers, numbers, events, enquiries, stories, fears, enthusiasm, mistakes, quotes, houses seen, houses dreamt of, houses bought, houses absolutely not to buy, Americans asking whether they can live in Tuscany with cypress views for 80,000 dollars and Italians replying, “Of course — perhaps in 1997.”

And that is exactly the point: if this story is to be told, it must be told neither as a fairy tale nor as a sneer. Or rather, it should be mocked just enough to save it from rhetoric, but not so much that one fails to see its power.

Because, yes, it is funny.

It is funny when an American arrives convinced that “a house in Italy” is a product, like a Netflix subscription with exposed beams. It is funny when an Italian seller describes a ruin as needing “just a refresh” while plants inside appear to have their own tax code. It is funny when a mayor wants to attract new residents but has a website last updated in 2016. It is funny when a notary pronounces “smart working” as though it were a tropical disease. It is funny when a country dreams of foreign investors and then treats as suspicious anyone who asks for a written answer within the week.

But beneath the comedy there is something serious.

There is a diaspora that is no longer merely memory, but an emotional and economic infrastructure. There are millions of people with an Italian connection, strong or faint, who today are not only asking where their grandparents came from, but where they themselves might go. There is an inland Italy that needs new inhabitants, not extras. There are local communities that could be revived, but only if the arrival of foreigners does not become aesthetic colonisation, property speculation or permanent tourism disguised as residence. There is a huge opportunity to turn nostalgia into project, genealogy into active citizenship, the dream of a house into a real relationship with a territory.

And there is something else which may interest you most of all, Mr Chase: moral contradiction.

Because these characters must not be saints.

Please, no.

Let us not make them four pure souls arriving in Italy to rediscover lost authenticity. Authenticity is a dangerous word, especially when used by someone who has just bought an industrial lamp made in China in order to make an Umbrian farmhouse feel more “real”.

Make them flawed.

One arrives because he can no longer stand America, but continues to behave as though every country should function according to American rules. One wants to “reconnect with his roots”, but knows nothing about contemporary Italy and confuses family history with an automatic right to be welcomed as the prodigal son. One buys as an investment and is then surprised when the village does not wish to become a dormitory for foreigners. One is genuinely in love with Italy, but must learn that loving a country also means accepting that the country may say no, make you wait, contradict you, disappoint you and ask you to understand before you transform.

And then give us the Italians.

Not as folkloric extras.

Not the wise farmer. Not the widow who teaches pasta. Not the visionary mayor with a tricolour sash and a heart of gold. Or at least, not only them.

Give us the owner who has allowed a house to rot for thirty years and triples the price the moment he hears an American accent. The excellent technician who is impossible to pin down. The young architect who understands everything and must mediate between regulations, dreams, budgets and stones from 1600 that refuse to be moved. The neighbour who is suspicious at first and then brings tomatoes. The barman who knows everything about the village but says nothing until you have ordered at least twelve coffees. The public official who looks like the antagonist but is in fact trying to prevent someone from turning a protected former chicken shed into a “boutique retreat”. The Italian cousin who appears as soon as citizenship, inheritance or sale is mentioned, because in Italy blood matters, but the land registry matters more.

That would be a series worth watching.

A series in which Italy does not automatically save anyone, but forces everyone to renegotiate who they are.

A series in which the American discovers that living better does not mean living without problems, but choosing problems that at least come with a decent view and a serious dinner at the end of the day.

A series in which the Italian discovers that these Americans are not merely tourists with larger budgets, but people who may bring energy, relationships, attention, new questions and, yes, a little healthy naivety — the kind sometimes needed to reopen doors that Italians had closed out of cynicism, exhaustion or the conviction that “nothing ever changes here”.

And a series in which the real twist, in the end, is not who betrays whom, who buys what, who inherits the house, who gets the permit, who discovers the family secret or who lied about the square footage.

The real twist is that Italy, despite everything, works.

Not always.
Not well.
Not as it should.
Not without swearing, certified emails, revenue stamps and a quantity of patience which in the United States would probably be medicalised.

But it works in its own human, imperfect, relational, infuriating and marvellous way. It works because, eventually, someone opens a door. Someone explains. Someone helps. Someone cheats you, of course, but that too is part of the curriculum. Someone invites you to lunch. Someone tells you, “Leave that house alone, I know a better one.” Someone puts you in touch with the right technician. Someone makes you understand that you are not buying only walls, but a position within a community.

And so yes, perhaps David Chase is exactly the right person to tell this story.

Because The Sopranos, beneath everything the public later fetishised, did not work simply because there were gangsters. It worked because it took an already exhausted imagination and hollowed it out from within. It showed men who believed themselves to be epic protagonists while they were often small, fragile, ridiculous, depressed and imprisoned by an inherited script. It understood that identity, when it becomes performance, can become a cage.

And today, Italian American identity, when it meets real Italy, needs precisely that: to be freed from its costume.

No more caricatures.

No more mafia as narrative shortcut.

No more Italy as colour therapy.

No more villages as backdrops for Americans in search of themselves.

Let us do something harder, and therefore more interesting: tell the story of people who arrive in Italy thinking they will find an answer and instead discover a much larger question.

What remains of origin when it stops being nostalgia and becomes a daily choice?

What does it mean to be Italian when a surname, a recipe, a family memory or a certificate found in an archive is no longer enough?

What happens when an old, depopulated, bureaucratic and beautiful country meets people arriving from a powerful, tired, nervous country full of money, fear and the desire to escape?

And above all: who changes whom?

Does the American change the village, or does the village change the American?

Does Italy welcome new citizens, or slowly absorb them until, after two years, they begin every sentence with “the problem with this country is...” and end it by saying they would not live anywhere else?

So, Mr Chase.

This is the story.

I am here.

Not because I presume to teach you how to write a scene. That would be like explaining the chisel to Michelangelo, or telling Carmela Soprano how to organise a dinner with guilt built into the menu.

But with a simple suggestion: before someone turns this intuition into a sequence of lemons, invented dialects, gifted houses, picturesque Italians and Americans redeemed by pecorino, come and speak with those who are seeing this new migration up close, every day, in emails, newsletters, events, reader stories and in the plans of people who want to leave, return, arrive, invest, understand and make fewer expensive mistakes.

Because Italian Americans moving to Italy are not a lifestyle-magazine trend.

They are a political, cultural, real-estate, family, economic, comic and deeply human story.

Told well, it could genuinely be something new.

Told badly, it will be just another one-euro house bought at a very high price.

And believe me, I have seen that already.

Even without HBO.

Mia madre si chiama Audrey.

È nata in Birmania - oggi Myanmar - in una di quelle famiglie di una volta: sette figli, umiltà, sacrifici, un’unione tra fratelli e sorelle che in Italia fatichiamo anche solo a immaginare.

Quando mi racconta la sua infanzia, i ricordi che sceglie sono sempre quelli di luce: correre a piedi nudi sotto la pioggia monsonica. Ammirare le pagode dorate all’alba. Gli scherzi tra fratelli e sorelle in una casa piccola e piena.

Non mi racconta mai la dittatura. Non me la descrive. La intravedo solo negli occhi - in quel momento preciso in cui il racconto si ferma, come se certe cose non avessero ancora trovato le parole giuste per uscire.

I suoi genitori hanno capito prima degli altri che non c’era futuro in quell’inferno.

Fuggire da Rangoon non era semplice. Non lo è mai, quando lasci tutto quello che conosci per un posto che non sai ancora nominare. Ma loro lo hanno fatto - gradualmente, un figlio alla volta, grazie all’aiuto di una comunità di salesiani dal cuore enorme che ha teso la mano quando nessun altro lo faceva.

La destinazione era l’Italia. Un paese sconosciuto. Una lingua - e una grammatica - del tutto nuova.

Mia madre aveva davanti a sé una scelta che non era davvero una scelta: imparare a vivere daccapo, o non vivere del tutto.

Ha scelto di imparare.

Ha studiato l’italiano con quella determinazione silenziosa che hanno solo le persone che sanno davvero cosa significa non avere alternative. Poi l’università. Poi la medicina - come tutti i suoi fratelli e sorelle, ognuno per la propria strada, tutti con lo stesso punto di partenza e la stessa voglia ostinata di arrivare.

Sono diventati tutti medici.

Non me lo ha mai detto come un vanto. Me lo ha detto come un fatto - con quella stessa semplicità con cui mi raccontava i piedi nudi sulla terra rossa di Rangoon. Come se le due cose fossero ugualmente normali, ugualmente parte della stessa storia.

Non sono mai stato in Myanmar.

Arrivano poche notizie da quel paese, e quasi nessuna di quelle che arrivano è buona. Ho imparato quello che so dalla voce di mia madre, dai suoi silenzi, dai gesti che fa quando pensa che nessuno la stia guardando.

Ho imparato che il rispetto verso l’altro non si insegna con le parole. Si trasmette con il modo in cui stai al mondo - con quell’umiltà e quel cuore aperto che appartengono a chi ha visto il peggio e ha scelto comunque di fidarsi del futuro.

Penso spesso a quello che non vediamo quando guardiamo una persona venuta da lontano.

Non vediamo la casa lasciata indietro. Non vediamo la lingua che hanno dovuto smettere di usare ogni giorno. Non vediamo i morti che non hanno potuto salutare, le abitudini abbandonate, le feste celebrate in modo sbagliato per anni finché non hanno imparato quelle nuove.

Vediamo solo l’accento. Il nome difficile da pronunciare. La faccia che non assomiglia alle nostre.

Mia madre ha un nome inglese - Audrey - dato da genitori che avevano già capito, prima ancora di partire, che i loro figli avrebbero dovuto muoversi in un mondo più grande di quello in cui erano nati.

Aveva già in quel nome un’intenzione.

Non so raccontare la Birmania. Non ho le parole giuste, non ho i ricordi diretti, non ho vissuto quello che ha vissuto lei.

So solo che ogni volta che qualcuno mi parla di chi viene da lontano come se fosse un problema da risolvere, penso a mia madre che corre a piedi nudi sotto la pioggia di Rangoon.

E penso che quella bambina - quella stessa bambina - è diventata una persona che ha attraversato mezzo mondo, imparato una lingua impossibile, costruito una famiglia, e mi ha insegnato, senza mai dirlo esplicitamente, che la gentilezza non è debolezza.

È la forma più coraggiosa di intelligenza che esista.

scrive Il Margine Bianco, una newsletter settimanale su paternità, storytelling e vita intenzionale.

ilmarginebianco.substack.com

How abandoned fields, mountain villages, climate pressure and a century of social change quietly turned Italy into one of Europe’s most surprising forest stories

When people abroad imagine Italy, they usually see vineyards, olive groves, wheat fields, cypress-lined roads, medieval villages and cultivated hills arranged with the sort of picturesque discipline that makes every second foreign visitor believe they have understood the country after three days in Tuscany. What they do not usually imagine is a forest nation. Yet this is precisely one of the more surprising truths about contemporary Italy: the country is now covered by forests for more than one third of its territory, and in some official readings the Italian forest estate exceeds 11 million hectares, equal to roughly 36.7% of the national surface. The new Carta Forestale d’Italia, based on 2020 data, also confirms that Italy has passed the symbolic threshold of 10 million hectares of mapped forest area, although the exact figure changes depending on whether one uses the national legal definition of forest, regional definitions, or the statistical definition used by FAO.

This is why the recent claim that Italy has become a “forest nation” is not just social-media poetry, although the internet has, as usual, made the sentence wear slightly too much make-up. It is broadly true that Italy is far more wooded than many people realise, and it is also true that a major symbolic shift has taken place: according to the 2026 “Foreste in Comune” report promoted by PEFC Italia with UNCEM, Legambiente and Consorzio Caire, forested land has overtaken utilised agricultural area since 2020, a situation described as not having occurred since the Middle Ages. That sentence is striking, and it deserves attention, but it should be read as the summary of a long social, economic and territorial transformation rather than as a simple story of national tree-planting heroism.

The deeper story begins not with environmental virtue, but with rural change. For centuries, much of Italy was intensely cultivated, grazed, cut, terraced, coppiced and managed because people needed food, wood, charcoal, animal pasture, chestnuts, construction material and space. The Italian countryside that foreigners often romanticise was never a purely natural landscape: it was a working machine, shaped by hunger, inheritance, poverty, ingenuity and hard labour. Then, during the twentieth century, industrialisation, urbanisation, agricultural mechanisation and the decline of marginal mountain economies changed the equation. Many fields that had once been barely profitable became impossible to justify. Many terraces became too expensive to maintain. Many villages lost people. Many slopes that had been kept open by sheep, goats, scythes and family labour were simply left alone. The forest returned not because Italy suddenly decided to become Scandinavia with better coffee, but because millions of small human decisions, absences and departures created the conditions for trees and shrubs to take back space.

This phenomenon is known in environmental history as a “forest transition”: a country or region that once lost forest cover begins to gain it again when agriculture becomes more productive elsewhere, rural pressure declines, and marginal land is released back to natural regeneration. In Italy this has been especially visible in the Apennines, the Alps, inland hills and mountain areas, where former pastures and cultivated slopes have gradually become woodland. The Italian National Forest Strategy explicitly recognises the natural expansion of forest area on abandoned crops, meadows and pastures in hilly and mountain areas as one of the defining processes of the national forest landscape.

The result is impressive, but also more complex than a feel-good headline. Official forest inventories show a country where forest area and biomass have increased significantly. The National Inventory of Forests and Forest Carbon Pools reported about 11.05 million hectares of forests, while forest biomass increased by 18.4% compared with the previous survey. Carbon stored in above-ground biomass and dead wood rose from 490 million tonnes of organic carbon to 569 million tonnes, corresponding to an increase of about 290 million tonnes of CO₂ stored. More recent ISPRA indicators estimate the carbon stock in Italian forests at around 712 million tonnes of carbon in 2023, with a positive carbon sink of 11.5 million tonnes of carbon, equivalent to about 42 million tonnes of CO₂, in that year.

These numbers matter because forests are not just scenery. They store carbon, protect soil, regulate water, reduce erosion, moderate local temperatures, create habitats and support biodiversity. They also shape how a country manages climate adaptation, tourism, landscape identity and the survival of inland communities. A wooded slope above a village is not only a postcard background; it can be a form of natural infrastructure, especially in a country where hydrogeological fragility is a national condition rather than an occasional emergency. This is one of the reasons why the National Forest Strategy presents forests not merely as an environmental asset, but as ecological, social and economic infrastructure for rural and mountain communities.

The geography of this new forest Italy is particularly revealing. The “Foreste in Comune” report shows that 75.7% of the country’s forest area is concentrated in 3,596 mountain municipalities, which account for less than half of the national territory and host only 13.5% of the Italian population. At the other extreme, around half of Italy’s municipalities have a forest index below 20%, and these are mostly lowland and urbanised areas where more than two thirds of Italians live, but which contain less than 10% of the national forest estate. In other words, Italy may have become a forest nation statistically, but most Italians do not live inside that forest reality every day. The country is forested, but the forest is unevenly distributed, and this explains why the transformation can be both enormous and strangely invisible.

There are also wonderful curiosities hidden in the data. Marcetelli, a small municipality in the province of Rieti, is described as Italy’s most forested municipality, with 98.49% of its territory covered by woodland. Bormida in Liguria and Percile near Rome follow with similarly astonishing levels of forest cover. Gubbio, in Umbria, holds the record for the largest absolute municipal forest area, with more than 26,800 hectares. At regional level, the Carta Forestale d’Italia identifies Tuscany as the region with the largest forest area, around 1.2 million hectares, followed by Piedmont and Trentino-Alto Adige. This alone should make us revise the lazy postcard version of Tuscany as only vineyards, villas and rolling wheat fields: Tuscany is also one of Italy’s great forest regions.

There is another historical curiosity worth noting. Until recently, Italy did not have a modern, homogeneous national forest map comparable to today’s Carta Forestale d’Italia. The new CFI2020, produced by CREA for the Ministry of Agriculture, is described as the first major national tool of this kind after the Forest Map of 1936, and it allows forest surfaces to be viewed at a 1:10,000 scale according to different legal and statistical definitions. This is not just a technical improvement for specialists; it is a cultural shift. A country cannot manage what it does not properly map, and Italy is finally giving itself a more precise visual and statistical understanding of one of its largest natural assets.

However, a mature article about Italy’s forest comeback should avoid pretending that every new tree is automatically good news. The return of forests to abandoned land can increase biodiversity, carbon storage and ecological stability, but it can also reduce open habitats, erase traditional rural landscapes, increase fuel continuity for wildfires and make mountain territories harder to manage when there are fewer people, fewer farmers and fewer active custodians of the land. ISPRA notes that Italian forest carbon sinks are strongly affected by fire years, and recent studies warn that land abandonment can increase fire proneness by expanding shrub and tree encroachment, creating more connected fuel across the landscape.

This is the essential point: Italy does not simply need “more forest”. Italy needs better forest. It needs forests that are monitored, managed, protected, used intelligently and connected to living communities rather than abandoned territories. Sustainable forest management is not the enemy of nature; in many Italian landscapes it is the condition for keeping forests resilient, reducing fire risk, protecting biodiversity, maintaining paths, supporting local economies and making sure that woodland is not merely the beautiful mask of rural decline. The romantic idea that nature always does best when humans disappear is tempting, but in a country as old, layered and human-shaped as Italy, the more intelligent question is not whether people should touch the forest, but how they should do so.

Italy’s forest story is therefore not only an environmental success story. It is also a story about migration from villages to cities, about agricultural change, about ageing mountain communities, about climate adaptation, about the economics of inland areas and about the strange way in which absence can create abundance. Trees have returned where people left, and this return now gives Italy a climate and ecological asset of enormous value. But the next chapter will not be written by spontaneous regrowth alone. It will be written by whether Italy can turn this unexpected forest wealth into a managed, living, resilient and productive landscape, without reducing it either to a museum of untouched nature or to another extractive resource.

The real surprise, then, is not simply that Italy has more forests than many imagined. The real surprise is that the Italian landscape, often sold abroad as a timeless composition of vineyards, villages and cultivated hills, is still changing profoundly. Italy has not only inherited beauty from its past; it is quietly growing a new geography. And perhaps the most Italian thing about this forest nation is precisely that it was not planned as a grand national gesture, but emerged from contradictions: abandonment and regeneration, decline and opportunity, silence and resilience. A forest nation, yes — but one that now has to decide what kind of forest nation it wants to become.

L’Italia, la nazione forestale che non avevamo notato

Come campi abbandonati, paesi di montagna, crisi climatica e un secolo di trasformazioni sociali hanno cambiato in silenzio il paesaggio italiano

Quando all’estero si immagina l’Italia, di solito si vedono vigneti, uliveti, colline coltivate, strade bordate di cipressi, borghi medievali e paesaggi agricoli così ordinati e fotogenici da far credere a ogni secondo visitatore straniero di aver capito il Paese dopo tre giorni in Toscana. Quello che quasi nessuno immagina, almeno non come prima immagine mentale, è una nazione forestale. Eppure questa è una delle verità più sorprendenti dell’Italia contemporanea: più di un terzo del territorio nazionale è oggi coperto da foreste e, secondo l’Inventario Nazionale delle Foreste e dei Serbatoi Forestali di Carbonio, la superficie forestale italiana supera gli 11 milioni di ettari, pari a circa il 36,7% del Paese. La nuova Carta Forestale d’Italia, basata su dati 2020, conferma a sua volta il superamento della soglia simbolica dei 10 milioni di ettari di superficie forestale mappata, anche se il numero preciso cambia a seconda della definizione utilizzata: quella giuridica nazionale, quelle regionali o quella statistica FAO.

Per questo l’idea, diventata virale, che l’Italia sia diventata una “forest nation” non è soltanto poesia da social, anche se internet, come spesso accade, ha messo alla frase un po’ troppo trucco. È vero che l’Italia è molto più boscosa di quanto si pensi, ed è vero anche che negli ultimi anni si è consumato un passaggio simbolico importante: secondo il rapporto 2026 “Foreste in Comune”, promosso da PEFC Italia con UNCEM, Legambiente e Consorzio Caire, dal 2020 la superficie forestale avrebbe superato la Superficie Agricola Utilizzata, un fatto che viene descritto come inedito dal Medioevo. È una frase forte, efficace, giornalisticamente perfetta; ma va letta per quello che è davvero, cioè la sintesi di una lunghissima trasformazione sociale, economica e territoriale, non il risultato di una semplice campagna nazionale di piantumazione alberi.

La storia profonda, infatti, non comincia con la virtù ambientalista, ma con il cambiamento del mondo rurale. Per secoli gran parte dell’Italia è stata coltivata, pascolata, tagliata, terrazzata, governata a ceduo, sfruttata e mantenuta aperta perché le persone avevano bisogno di cibo, legna, carbone, pascoli, castagne, materiali da costruzione e superfici utilizzabili. Il paesaggio rurale italiano che molti stranieri romanticizzano non è mai stato un giardino naturale lasciato in pace: era una macchina di lavoro, costruita da fame, eredità, povertà, ingegno, fatica familiare e necessità. Poi, nel Novecento, industrializzazione, urbanizzazione, meccanizzazione agricola e declino delle economie montane marginali hanno cambiato tutto. Molti campi che un tempo erano appena sufficienti sono diventati economicamente insostenibili. Molti terrazzamenti sono diventati troppo costosi da mantenere. Molti paesi hanno perso abitanti. Molti versanti che erano stati tenuti aperti da pecore, capre, falci e lavoro umano sono stati semplicemente lasciati andare. Il bosco è tornato non perché l’Italia abbia deciso improvvisamente di diventare una Scandinavia con un caffè migliore, ma perché milioni di piccole decisioni, assenze e partenze hanno creato le condizioni perché alberi e arbusti riprendessero spazio.

In storia ambientale questo fenomeno viene spesso definito “transizione forestale”: un Paese o una regione che in passato ha perso foreste comincia a riguadagnarle quando l’agricoltura diventa più produttiva altrove, la pressione rurale diminuisce e i terreni marginali tornano disponibili per la rinaturalizzazione. In Italia questo processo è stato particolarmente evidente sugli Appennini, sulle Alpi, nelle aree interne e nelle colline meno redditizie, dove pascoli e coltivi abbandonati si sono progressivamente trasformati in boschi. La stessa Strategia Forestale Nazionale riconosce l’espansione naturale della superficie forestale su coltivi, prati e pascoli abbandonati, soprattutto in collina e montagna, come uno dei processi chiave del paesaggio forestale italiano.

Il risultato è impressionante, ma più complesso di un titolo ottimistico. Gli inventari forestali ufficiali mostrano un Paese in cui non solo è cresciuta la superficie boscata, ma è aumentata anche la biomassa. L’Inventario Nazionale ha stimato circa 11,05 milioni di ettari di foreste, mentre la biomassa forestale è cresciuta del 18,4% rispetto alla precedente rilevazione. Lo stock di carbonio nella biomassa epigea e nel legno morto è passato da 490 a 569 milioni di tonnellate di carbonio organico, con un incremento equivalente a circa 290 milioni di tonnellate di CO₂ stoccata. Gli indicatori ISPRA più recenti stimano inoltre che nel 2023 lo stock di carbonio delle foreste italiane fosse pari a circa 712 milioni di tonnellate di carbonio, con un assorbimento netto annuo di 11,5 milioni di tonnellate di carbonio, equivalenti a circa 42 milioni di tonnellate di CO₂.

Questi numeri contano perché le foreste non sono soltanto paesaggio. Stoccano carbonio, proteggono il suolo, regolano l’acqua, riducono l’erosione, moderano il microclima, creano habitat e sostengono la biodiversità. Modellano anche il modo in cui un Paese affronta l’adattamento climatico, il turismo, l’identità dei territori e la sopravvivenza delle comunità interne. Un versante boscato sopra un paese non è solo uno sfondo da cartolina; può essere una vera infrastruttura naturale, soprattutto in un Paese fragile dal punto di vista idrogeologico. Non a caso la Strategia Forestale Nazionale presenta le foreste non come semplice bene ambientale, ma come risorsa ecologica, sociale ed economica per le comunità rurali e montane.

La geografia di questa nuova Italia forestale è forse ancora più interessante del dato nazionale. Il rapporto “Foreste in Comune” mostra che il 75,7% dell’intera superficie forestale italiana si concentra in 3.596 comuni montani, che rappresentano meno della metà della superficie nazionale e ospitano appena il 13,5% della popolazione. All’estremo opposto, circa metà dei comuni italiani ha un indice di boscosità inferiore al 20%: sono in prevalenza territori di pianura o urbanizzati, dove vive oltre due terzi della popolazione, ma che ospitano meno del 10% delle foreste nazionali. In altre parole, l’Italia può essere diventata una nazione forestale dal punto di vista statistico, ma la maggior parte degli italiani non vive ogni giorno dentro questa realtà forestale. Il Paese è boscoso, ma il bosco è distribuito in modo diseguale, e questo spiega perché la trasformazione possa essere enorme e, allo stesso tempo, quasi invisibile.

Dentro i dati ci sono anche curiosità meravigliose. Marcetelli, piccolo comune in provincia di Rieti, viene indicato come il comune più boscoso d’Italia, con il 98,49% del territorio coperto da boschi. Seguono Bormida, in Liguria, e Percile, vicino Roma, con percentuali quasi altrettanto sorprendenti. Gubbio, in Umbria, detiene invece il primato per estensione assoluta di superficie forestale comunale, con oltre 26.800 ettari. A livello regionale, la Carta Forestale d’Italia indica la Toscana come la regione con la maggiore superficie forestale, circa 1,2 milioni di ettari, seguita dal Piemonte e dal Trentino-Alto Adige. Già questo basterebbe a correggere la versione pigra e da cartolina della Toscana come terra soltanto di vigneti, ville e colline coltivate: la Toscana è anche una delle grandi regioni forestali italiane.

C’è poi un’altra curiosità storica. Fino a pochissimo tempo fa l’Italia non disponeva di una moderna carta nazionale omogenea delle proprie foreste paragonabile all’attuale Carta Forestale d’Italia. La nuova CFI2020, realizzata dal CREA per il Ministero dell’Agricoltura, viene descritta come il primo grande strumento nazionale di questo tipo dopo la Carta Forestale della Milizia Forestale del 1936, e permette di visualizzare le superfici forestali a scala 1:10.000 secondo diverse definizioni giuridiche e statistiche. Non è solo un passo avanti per tecnici, ricercatori e amministratori: è anche un passaggio culturale. Un Paese non può gestire davvero ciò che non conosce e non rappresenta con precisione, e l’Italia sta finalmente costruendo una fotografia più accurata di uno dei suoi più grandi patrimoni naturali.

Detto questo, un articolo serio sulla rinascita forestale italiana deve evitare l’errore opposto, cioè fingere che ogni nuovo albero sia automaticamente una buona notizia. Il ritorno del bosco su terreni abbandonati può aumentare biodiversità, stoccaggio di carbonio e stabilità ecologica, ma può anche ridurre habitat aperti, cancellare paesaggi rurali tradizionali, aumentare la continuità del combustibile vegetale in caso di incendi e rendere più difficile la gestione di territori montani dove ci sono meno persone, meno agricoltori e meno custodi attivi del paesaggio. ISPRA sottolinea che l’assorbimento di carbonio delle foreste italiane è fortemente condizionato dagli incendi, mentre studi recenti avvertono che l’abbandono dei terreni può aumentare la propensione al fuoco proprio perché favorisce l’espansione di arbusti e alberi e quindi la continuità del combustibile.

Il punto essenziale è questo: all’Italia non serve soltanto “più bosco”. Serve bosco migliore. Servono foreste monitorate, gestite, protette, utilizzate con intelligenza e collegate a comunità vive, non semplicemente a territori abbandonati. La gestione forestale sostenibile non è nemica della natura; in molti paesaggi italiani è la condizione per rendere i boschi più resilienti, ridurre il rischio di incendio, proteggere la biodiversità, mantenere sentieri e infrastrutture leggere, sostenere economie locali e impedire che il bosco diventi soltanto la bella maschera del declino rurale. L’idea romantica che la natura stia sempre meglio quando gli esseri umani spariscono è seducente, ma in un Paese antico, stratificato e modellato dall’uomo come l’Italia la domanda più intelligente non è se le persone debbano toccare il bosco, ma come debbano farlo.

La storia forestale italiana, quindi, non è soltanto una storia ambientale positiva. È anche una storia di migrazione dai paesi alle città, di cambiamento agricolo, di invecchiamento delle comunità montane, di adattamento climatico, di economia delle aree interne e del modo strano in cui l’assenza può generare abbondanza. Gli alberi sono tornati dove le persone se ne sono andate, e questo ritorno offre oggi all’Italia un patrimonio climatico ed ecologico enorme. Ma il prossimo capitolo non potrà essere scritto dalla sola ricrescita spontanea. Dipenderà dalla capacità del Paese di trasformare questa ricchezza forestale inattesa in un paesaggio gestito, vivo, resiliente e produttivo, senza ridurlo né a museo intoccabile della natura né a risorsa da sfruttare senza visione.

La vera sorpresa, allora, non è solo che l’Italia abbia più foreste di quanto molti immaginassero. La vera sorpresa è che il paesaggio italiano, spesso venduto all’estero come una composizione immobile di vigneti, borghi e colline coltivate, continui invece a cambiare profondamente. L’Italia non ha soltanto ereditato bellezza dal passato; sta crescendo, in silenzio, una nuova geografia. E forse la cosa più italiana di questa nazione forestale è proprio il fatto che non sia nata da un grande gesto pianificato, ma da contraddizioni: abbandono e rigenerazione, declino e opportunità, silenzio e resilienza. Una nazione forestale, sì — ma che ora deve decidere che tipo di nazione forestale vuole diventare.

Some stories work because they contain one irresistible detail. In this case, that detail is the €200 figure mentioned by Fodor’s to book the ghost village of Celleno as the setting for a wedding. It is the sort of number that immediately makes people stop scrolling, especially in a country where even organising a dinner with friends can now feel like a minor infrastructure project. Of course, it should be treated with the necessary caution: this is a figure reported by an international travel publication and republished by , not a full municipal price list including conditions, services, permits, availability and every practical detail. Still, it is a powerful hook, because it draws attention to a place that deserves a closer look.

Celleno, in the Tuscia area of northern Lazio, is known as the Borgo Fantasma, the Ghost Village. It is a suspended place of tufa-stone houses, silent lanes, dramatic gullies, panoramic views and rural memory. It sits in the province of Viterbo, not far from Civita di Bagnoregio, and the tourist material describes it as a place to be experienced slowly, where every stone seems to hold a story and every view opens onto one of the most striking landscapes of central Italy.

Yet the interesting point is not simply that Celleno is beautiful. Italy has many beautiful villages, perhaps even too many to describe them all without falling into the usual brochure language. What makes Celleno more interesting is that it appears to be attempting something more complex: not erasing abandonment, not pretending that the past can return intact, not turning ruins into empty scenery, but giving a contemporary function to a place that has lost its original one.

The official tourist website of the Borgo Fantasma moves precisely in this direction. It is not merely an emotional showcase, but a practical tool for visitors, presenting history, activities, trekking, food and wine, weddings, film locations, team building and direct contacts. It also presents Celleno as a place for civil and religious weddings in a setting described as unique, exclusive and dedicated.

This practical approach is reinforced by the opening of the tourist infopoint in the old village, with the single number 338 7197681 for information, guided tour bookings, museum opening times and local services. Local reporting presents the infopoint as a central service for organising the tourist offer of the Ghost Village, aimed not only at individual visitors but also at schools, associations and tour operators.

And this is where the story becomes much more interesting than the headline about a €200 wedding. A ghost village, if it remains only “ghostly”, risks becoming an aesthetic object: beautiful to photograph, easy to romanticise, convenient to package, but ultimately detached from the living community around it. If, instead, that village becomes a place for guided visits, cultural events, museums, education, walks and even weddings, then it is not simply coming back to life as it once was. It is serving the present in another way.

This may be one of the most useful lessons for many Italian places suspended between abandonment and memory. Not every abandoned village can return to being inhabited as it once was, and perhaps not every village should try to do so. In some cases, the economic, demographic, structural or logistical conditions are simply no longer there. In others, the danger is to create a small fiction for visitors, with a few vintage signs, a few wrought-iron tables and a story more convincing than the reality behind it. Celleno, at least for now, seems to suggest a different route: accepting its condition as an abandoned village without being crushed by it.

The Orsini Castle, the Museum of Archaic Maiolica, the medieval butto, the churches, the historic ruins, the panoramic routes and the memory of the population’s transfer to the new Celleno form a layered story, not just a picturesque one. There is also the important connection with Enrico Castellani, who bought and restored the Rocca Orsini and remains one of the key figures in the cultural revival of the village.

Another sign of direction is the €75,000 funding obtained by the Municipality of Celleno for “Celleno Immersiva”, a project dedicated to digital technologies, virtual reality, 360-degree filming, digital reconstructions, multimedia content and an avatar guide designed to make the village and its museums more accessible and engaging. Here too, the point is not to replace the real village with a digital version, but to use contemporary tools to make a fragile heritage easier to understand and experience.

Of course, caution is needed. The regeneration of Italian villages is a slippery field, full of good intentions, easy slogans and occasional illusions. The risk of turning every fragile place into a “location” is real. The risk of using the word “authenticity” until it becomes meaningless is real. The risk of creating tourism without meaningful local benefit is real. Yet Celleno deserves attention because it seems to ask the right question: not how do we bring everything back to what it once was, but how do we give meaning, use and future to what has remained?

In the end, the €200 figure is the narrative hook. The real story is different: a ghost village does not have to be dead. It may not return to being a village in the traditional sense, but it can become a place of culture, memory, events, visits, education, light economic activity and local identity. It can continue to serve its community even after losing the function for which it was originally built.

Perhaps this is what makes Celleno so interesting. It does not promise to erase abandonment, but tries to turn it into story, experience and possibility. It does not pretend that time has not passed, but uses that passage of time as part of its value. It does not go back. More realistically, it looks for a way forward.

Have you been there? Would you visit it, or even get married in a ghost village? And more broadly: should these places try to become what they once were, or can they have a different future, more fragile perhaps, but also more honest?

Celleno, il borgo fantasma che non vuole essere morto

Secondo Fodor’s, ripreso da We the Italians, il Borgo Fantasma di Celleno può essere prenotato per un matrimonio a partire da 200 euro: ma la vera notizia non è il prezzo, è il tentativo di dare una nuova funzione a un luogo abbandonato.

Ci sono notizie che funzionano perché hanno dentro un dettaglio irresistibile. In questo caso, il dettaglio sono quei 200 euro citati da Fodor’s per prenotare il borgo fantasma di Celleno come scenario di un matrimonio. Una cifra talmente bassa da sembrare quasi una provocazione, soprattutto in un Paese dove anche una cena con qualche amico può ormai richiedere un piccolo piano industriale. Naturalmente, va presa per ciò che è: una cifra riportata da una testata internazionale e rilanciata da We the Italians, non un tariffario comunale da considerare automaticamente definitivo, completo di servizi, condizioni, permessi e disponibilità. Però quel dettaglio funziona, perché costringe a guardare Celleno con più attenzione.

Celleno, nella Tuscia viterbese, è conosciuto come il Borgo Fantasma. È un luogo sospeso, fatto di case in tufo, vicoli silenziosi, calanchi, scorci panoramici e memoria rurale. Si trova nel Lazio settentrionale, non lontano da Viterbo e da Civita di Bagnoregio, e il materiale turistico del borgo lo racconta come un luogo da attraversare lentamente, dove ogni pietra conserva una storia e ogni scorcio apre su uno dei paesaggi più suggestivi dell’Italia centrale.

Ma il punto interessante non è soltanto la bellezza del posto. Di borghi belli, in Italia, ne abbiamo tanti, forse persino troppi per riuscire a raccontarli tutti senza cadere nella solita lingua da brochure. Il punto è che Celleno sembra provare a fare una cosa più complessa: non cancellare l’abbandono, non fingere che il passato possa tornare intatto, non trasformare la rovina in scenografia vuota, ma trovare una funzione contemporanea per un luogo che ha perso quella originaria.

Il nuovo sito turistico ufficiale del Borgo Fantasma va proprio in questa direzione. Non è solo una vetrina emozionale, ma uno strumento pratico per orientare il visitatore tra storia, attività, trekking, food & wine, matrimoni, location per film, team building e contatti. Il sito presenta anche Celleno come luogo per matrimoni civili o religiosi, in una location definita unica, esclusiva e dedicata.

A rafforzare questa impostazione c’è anche l’attivazione dell’infopoint turistico nel borgo vecchio, con il numero unico 338 7197681 per informazioni, prenotazioni delle visite guidate, orari e servizi del sistema museale locale. La notizia, riportata anche dalla stampa locale, presenta l’infopoint come un centro per organizzare l’offerta turistica del Borgo Fantasma, rivolto a visitatori individuali, scuole, associazioni e tour operator.

Ed è qui che la storia diventa più interessante della battuta sul matrimonio da 200 euro. Perché un borgo fantasma, se resta solo “fantasma”, rischia di diventare un oggetto estetico: bello da fotografare, facile da raccontare, comodo da romanticizzare, ma in fondo separato dalla vita concreta della comunità che gli sta intorno. Se invece quel borgo diventa luogo di visite, eventi, cultura, museo diffuso, didattica, escursioni e anche matrimoni, allora non torna semplicemente in vita come prima, ma comincia a servire il presente in un altro modo.

Questa è forse una delle lezioni più utili per tanti luoghi italiani sospesi tra abbandono e memoria. Non tutti i borghi possono tornare a essere abitati come un tempo, e forse non tutti devono farlo. In alcuni casi mancano le condizioni economiche, demografiche, logistiche o strutturali; in altri casi, il rischio è costruire una piccola finzione per turisti, con due insegne vintage, tre tavolini in ferro battuto e una narrazione più forte della realtà. Celleno, almeno per ora, sembra suggerire una strada diversa: accettare la propria condizione di borgo abbandonato, ma non farsene schiacciare.

Il Castello Orsini, il Museo delle Maioliche Arcaiche, il butto medievale, le chiese, i ruderi storici, i percorsi panoramici e la memoria del trasferimento della popolazione verso la nuova Celleno compongono una storia stratificata, non semplicemente pittoresca. A questo si aggiunge il legame con Enrico Castellani, che acquistò e restaurò la Rocca Orsini e che rappresenta una delle figure più importanti della rinascita culturale del borgo.

C’è poi un ulteriore segnale di direzione: il Comune di Celleno ha ottenuto un finanziamento di 75.000 euro per “Celleno Immersiva”, un progetto dedicato all’uso di tecnologie digitali, realtà virtuale, riprese a 360 gradi, ricostruzioni digitali, contenuti multimediali e un avatar-guida per raccontare il borgo e i suoi musei in modo più accessibile e coinvolgente. Anche qui, la questione non è sostituire il borgo reale con una versione digitale, ma usare strumenti contemporanei per rendere più leggibile un patrimonio fragile.

Naturalmente, bisogna restare prudenti. La valorizzazione dei borghi italiani è un terreno scivoloso, pieno di ottime intenzioni, slogan facili e qualche illusione. Il rischio di trasformare ogni luogo fragile in “location” esiste. Il rischio di usare la parola “autenticità” fino a svuotarla completamente esiste. Il rischio di fare turismo senza generare vero beneficio locale esiste. Però Celleno merita attenzione proprio perché sembra porre la domanda giusta: non come riportiamo tutto a com’era prima, ma come facciamo a dare senso, uso e futuro a ciò che è rimasto.

In fondo, i 200 euro sono il gancio narrativo. La notizia vera è un’altra: un borgo fantasma può non essere morto. Può non tornare a essere paese nel senso tradizionale, ma può diventare luogo di cultura, memoria, eventi, visita, educazione, economia leggera e identità territoriale. Può continuare a servire la propria comunità anche dopo avere perso la funzione per cui era nato.

E forse è proprio questa la cosa più interessante di Celleno. Non promette di cancellare l’abbandono, ma prova a trasformarlo in racconto, esperienza e possibilità. Non finge che il tempo non sia passato, ma prova a usare quel tempo come parte del proprio valore. Non torna indietro. Cerca, più realisticamente, un modo per andare avanti.

E voi ci siete stati? Vi piacerebbe visitarlo, o magari persino sposarvi in un borgo fantasma? Soprattutto: pensate che questi luoghi debbano provare a tornare com’erano, oppure possano avere un futuro diverso, più fragile ma forse più vero?

Ci sono misure che nascono piccole, restano piccole, producono numeri piccoli, generano effetti piccoli, eppure vengono raccontate come se fossero un tassello brillante di una grande strategia di competizione fiscale, attrazione internazionale e rigenerazione dei territori. La flat tax al 7% per i pensionati esteri che si trasferiscono in alcuni comuni del Sud Italia appartiene esattamente a questa categoria: una misura che, dopo anni di applicazione, arriva a 933 beneficiari nelle dichiarazioni 2025, anno d’imposta 2024, e viene ancora discussa con un tono che sembra voler trasformare una modesta curiosità fiscale in una grande idea di sviluppo territoriale.

Siamo seri: 933 persone, in un Paese di quasi 60 milioni di abitanti, distribuite su regioni intere, non sono un successo. Sono il tipo di numero che, con un minimo di cattiveria ma anche con un minimo di realismo, fa più rumore una grigliata organizzata bene da quattro amici con una mailing list decente. Il gettito cumulato dal 2020, pari a 11,8 milioni di euro, viene presentato come un dato “in crescita”, ed è vero che cresce rispetto ai 61 soggetti del 2019, ma il punto non è se una misura passa da quasi nulla a poco più di quasi nulla; il punto è se abbia senso celebrarla, difenderla, promuoverla e venderla all’estero come se fosse una leva seria per cambiare il destino dei piccoli comuni italiani.

Il problema non è soltanto quantitativo. Il problema è concettuale. Davvero il modo migliore per aiutare territori fragili, spopolati, con servizi spesso già in difficoltà, con giovani che se ne vanno, imprese che faticano, immobili che si svuotano e amministrazioni locali che combattono ogni giorno con bilanci risicati, dovrebbe essere attrarre pensionati stranieri con una tassazione agevolata sui redditi esteri? Davvero questa è la grande risposta? Non incentivi per creare impresa, non strumenti per far rientrare giovani competenze, non supporto a chi apre attività, non misure strutturali per servizi, trasporti, sanità territoriale, formazione, lavoro e infrastrutture digitali, ma uno sconto fiscale per chi arriva a godersi una pensione maturata altrove.

E qui bisogna anche smettere di ripetere meccanicamente che “non conta solo il gettito diretto”, perché certo, è ovvio che un residente spenda qualcosa sul territorio, paghi un affitto o compri casa, vada al ristorante, chiami un idraulico, faccia la spesa, magari sistemi un immobile. Ma questa non è, di per sé, una politica di sviluppo. È consumo locale. È utile, benissimo, ma non basta a trasformare un comune fragile in un ecosistema vivo. Anzi, in alcuni contesti rischia perfino di creare l’ennesima illusione immobiliare: qualche casa venduta meglio, qualche annuncio più patinato, qualche consulente che costruisce pacchetti per stranieri, e poi il territorio resta con gli stessi problemi di prima, solo con una narrazione più presentabile.

Ancora più irritante è il modo in cui certi presunti esperti internazionali raccontano questa misura, vendendola come una grande intuizione italiana, una furbissima operazione di fiscal competition, una destinazione da inserire nei corsi, nei webinar, nei viaggi organizzati per comprare casa nei borghi del Sud, come se parlassimo di pentole in dimostrazione e non di comunità reali, con fragilità reali, servizi reali e persone reali. Il piccolo comune meridionale diventa scenografia fiscale, il borgo diventa prodotto, la piazzetta diventa brochure, la casa da ristrutturare diventa sogno impacchettato, mentre nessuno si chiede seriamente se quei territori abbiano davvero bisogno di questo, o se non abbiano invece bisogno di giovani, imprese, scuole, medici, trasporti, lavoro e amministrazioni messe nelle condizioni di pianificare il futuro.

Perché poi c’è un punto che viene quasi sempre ignorato con una leggerezza sconcertante: molti piccoli comuni del Sud fanno già fatica a garantire servizi adeguati ai propri anziani. Sanità territoriale fragile, trasporti complicati, distanza dagli ospedali, assistenza domiciliare insufficiente, uffici pubblici ridotti all’osso, farmacie e presìdi che reggono più per abitudine e sacrificio che per disegno strategico. In questo quadro, attrarre pensionati dall’estero può anche avere senso in casi specifici, se gestito con intelligenza e dentro una strategia più ampia, ma venderlo come soluzione generale o come modello virtuoso è semplicemente assurdo. Prima di trasformare questi territori in destinazioni fiscali per pensionati internazionali, forse bisognerebbe chiedersi se siano messi nelle condizioni di servire dignitosamente i pensionati che ci vivono già.

La fotografia regionale, poi, non cambia il giudizio. Abruzzo con 221 beneficiari, Puglia con 191, Sicilia con 165, Sardegna con 136: quattro regioni raccolgono oltre il 76% delle preferenze. Anche qui, possiamo elencare, mappare, commentare, fare grafici, organizzare convegni, ma resta il fatto che stiamo parlando di numeri microscopici rispetto alla scala dei problemi. Se una misura pensata per attrarre residenti dall’estero verso aree fragili produce, dopo anni, meno di mille aderenti complessivi, non si può continuare a trattarla come un caso di studio da esportare; al massimo è un esperimento marginale che merita una valutazione sobria, non un applauso.

Il punto politico, però, è ancora più grave. Ogni volta che si celebra una misura del genere, si conferma una certa idea rinunciataria del Mezzogiorno e delle aree interne: territori da rendere appetibili a chi arriva con redditi prodotti altrove, più che territori capaci di generare nuova ricchezza, nuova impresa e nuove competenze. È la stessa logica che confonde la valorizzazione immobiliare con lo sviluppo, l’arrivo di qualche residente benestante con la rinascita demografica, il consumo con la produzione, la cartolina con la comunità. E questa logica, francamente, ha stancato.

Non si tratta di essere contro i pensionati stranieri, né contro chi sceglie l’Italia per vivere meglio. Ben vengano, se arrivano con rispetto, se si integrano, se contribuiscono, se comprano case abbandonate e le rimettono in vita senza trasformare i luoghi in scenografie per espatriati. Il punto è un altro: uno Stato serio dovrebbe domandarsi che cosa sta incentivando e perché. Se incentiva chi crea lavoro, chi apre imprese, chi assume giovani, chi porta ricerca, chi produce servizi, chi innova, chi costruisce filiere locali, allora sta facendo politica industriale e territoriale. Se incentiva prevalentemente chi porta una pensione estera e paga il 7% sui redditi prodotti altrove, sta facendo una piccola operazione fiscale di nicchia. Legittima, forse. Strategica, no.

E allora chiamiamola per quello che è: una misura limitata, con risultati limitati, effetti probabilmente limitati e un’enorme sproporzione tra il rumore narrativo e la realtà dei numeri. Non è il grande successo italiano della competizione fiscale. Non è la soluzione allo spopolamento. Non è la rinascita dei borghi. Non è il futuro del Sud. È una piccola agevolazione per una platea piccola, venduta troppo spesso con un entusiasmo che dice molto più dei venditori che dei territori.

Il Mezzogiorno non ha bisogno di essere raccontato come il paradiso fiscale gentile per pensionati stranieri. Ha bisogno di essere trattato come un luogo dove si può vivere, lavorare, investire, creare impresa, fare ricerca, crescere figli, costruire servizi e restare senza sentirsi eroi o nostalgici. Tutto il resto, inclusa questa retorica trionfale su 933 beneficiari, assomiglia molto a quello che è: una grigliata rumorosa spacciata per strategia nazionale.

Italy’s 7% Flat Tax for Foreign Retirees Is Not a Success Story. It Is a Barbecue Being Sold as a National Strategy

There are policies that start small, remain small, produce small numbers, generate small effects, and are nevertheless described as if they were part of a grand national strategy for fiscal competition, international attraction and territorial regeneration. Italy’s 7% flat tax for foreign retirees moving to selected towns in the South belongs exactly to that category: a measure which, after years of implementation, has reached 933 beneficiaries in the 2025 tax returns, referring to the 2024 tax year, and is still discussed in a tone that tries to turn a modest fiscal curiosity into a serious development tool for fragile communities.

Let us be serious: 933 people, in a country of almost 60 million inhabitants, spread across entire regions, are not a success. With a little cruelty, but also with a little realism, a well-organised barbecue by four friends with a half-decent mailing list would probably make more noise. The cumulative tax revenue since 2020, reportedly €11.8 million, is presented as a figure “in growth”, and yes, it has grown compared with the 61 taxpayers recorded in 2019, but the point is not whether a scheme has moved from almost nothing to a little more than almost nothing; the point is whether it makes any sense to celebrate it, defend it, promote it abroad and sell it as if it were a serious lever to change the future of Italy’s small towns.

The problem is not only numerical. It is conceptual. Are we really saying that the best way to help fragile, ageing, depopulating territories, where young people leave, businesses struggle, houses stand empty and local councils operate with painfully limited resources, is to attract foreign retirees through a favourable tax regime on foreign-source income? Is this really the great answer? Not incentives to create businesses, not tools to bring back young skills, not support for people opening local activities, not structural measures for services, transport, healthcare, training, jobs and digital infrastructure, but a tax discount for people who arrive to enjoy a pension earned elsewhere.

And we should also stop repeating, as if it settled the matter, that “the direct tax revenue is not the only effect”. Of course it is not. A new resident spends money locally, pays rent or buys a house, goes to restaurants, calls a plumber, does the shopping, perhaps renovates an old property. That may be useful, but it is not, in itself, a development strategy. It is local consumption. Fine. Welcome. But it does not turn a fragile municipality into a living economic ecosystem. In some places it may even create yet another real-estate illusion: a few houses sold at better prices, a few glossier listings, a few consultants building packages for foreigners, and then the territory remains exactly where it was, with the same structural problems, only wrapped in a more marketable story.

What is even more irritating is the way some self-appointed international experts present this measure, selling it as a brilliant Italian idea, a clever act of fiscal competition, a destination to be included in courses, webinars and organised trips to buy homes in southern villages, as if they were selling kitchenware on television rather than dealing with real communities, real fragilities, real services and real people. The small southern town becomes a fiscal backdrop, the village becomes a product, the square becomes a brochure, the house to renovate becomes a packaged dream, while almost nobody asks whether these places actually need this, or whether they need young people, businesses, schools, doctors, transport, jobs and local administrations with the means to plan their future.

There is also a point that is too often ignored with astonishing lightness: many small towns in the South already struggle to provide adequate services for their own elderly residents. Local healthcare is fragile, transport is complicated, hospitals are distant, home care is insufficient, public offices are reduced to the bare minimum, and pharmacies and local services often survive more through habit and sacrifice than through any coherent strategic design. In that context, attracting retirees from abroad may make sense in specific cases, if managed intelligently and as part of a broader plan, but selling it as a general solution or a virtuous national model is simply absurd. Before turning these territories into tax destinations for international pensioners, perhaps we should ask whether they are properly equipped to serve the pensioners who already live there.

The regional breakdown does not change the assessment. Abruzzo has 221 beneficiaries, Puglia 191, Sicily 165 and Sardinia 136: four regions account for more than 76% of the total. We can list them, map them, comment on them, turn them into charts and organise conferences around them, but the fact remains that these are microscopic figures when compared with the scale of the problems. If a measure designed to attract foreign residents to fragile areas produces fewer than a thousand beneficiaries after several years, it should not be treated as a case study to be exported; at most, it is a marginal experiment that deserves sober evaluation, not applause.

The political issue is even more serious. Every time a measure like this is celebrated, it confirms a rather defeatist idea of southern Italy and inland areas: places to be made attractive to those arriving with income generated elsewhere, rather than places capable of generating new wealth, new businesses and new skills. It is the same logic that confuses real-estate appreciation with development, the arrival of a few relatively wealthy residents with demographic revival, consumption with production, the postcard with the community. And frankly, that logic has become exhausting.

This is not about being against foreign retirees, nor against those who choose Italy for a better life. They are welcome, if they arrive with respect, if they integrate, if they contribute, if they buy abandoned houses and bring them back to life without turning places into expatriate stage sets. The point is different: a serious state should ask what it is incentivising and why. If it incentivises people who create jobs, open businesses, employ young people, bring research, provide services, innovate and build local supply chains, then it is pursuing industrial and territorial policy. If it mainly incentivises people who bring a foreign pension and pay 7% on income generated elsewhere, then it is running a small niche fiscal scheme. Legitimate, perhaps. Strategic, no.

So let us call it what it is: a limited measure, with limited results, probably limited effects and a huge disproportion between the narrative noise and the reality of the numbers. It is not Italy’s great success story in fiscal competition. It is not the solution to depopulation. It is not the rebirth of the villages. It is not the future of the South. It is a small tax break for a small audience, too often sold with an enthusiasm that says much more about the sellers than about the territories.

Southern Italy does not need to be marketed as a gentle tax haven for foreign retirees. It needs to be treated as a place where people can live, work, invest, build businesses, conduct research, raise children, create services and stay without feeling like heroes or nostalgics. Everything else, including the triumphant rhetoric around 933 beneficiaries, looks very much like what it is: a noisy barbecue being sold as a national strategy.

In Sardegna (ma in fondo anche in tanti altri territori in Europa), ci sono espressioni che usiamo da così tanto tempo da rischiare di non sentirle più. Spopolamento, emigrazione, ritorno, fuga dei talenti/giovani/cervelli, paesi che si svuotano, competenze che non tornano, famiglie divise tra chi è rimasto, chi è andato via, chi vorrebbe rientrare ma non sa come, chi è arrivato e non trova ancora il proprio posto. Tutte espressioni che raccontano fenomeni reali. Ma quando una parola viene ripetuta troppo a lungo senza essere interrogata, può trasformarsi in una formula e, si sa, le formule anche quando nascono per spiegare, a volte finiscono per nascondere, posticipare, rinviare.

Il rapporto Restare, partire, tornare: intenzioni e condizioni, nato dall’indagine CRENoS–NODI sulla mobilità da e verso la Sardegna, prova a non limitarsi a osservare i flussi, ma ad ascoltare le intenzioni. Quindi non più (o non tanto) contare chi parte e chi arriva, ma chiedersi cosa muove o trattiene le persone prima che una decisione diventi un dato statistico. E, allo stesso tempo, non soltanto registrare gli effetti, ma capire le condizioni che rendono immaginabile una scelta diversa.

La survey, costruita da CRENoS e NODI, ha raccolto 1.005 risposte: 544 da persone residenti in Sardegna e 461 da persone che vivono fuori dall’Isola ma mantengono, a vario titolo, un legame con essa. Il rapporto analizza intenzioni di partenza, possibilità di rientro, legame con la Sardegna, fattori di mobilità e willingness to pay per vivere o tornare nell’Isola. Già questa impostazione voleva far emergere come la Sardegna non venga vissuta soltanto attraverso chi c’è fisicamente, ma anche attraverso chi continua a far parte del suo campo relazionale, affettivo, professionale o immaginativo pur vivendo altrove (i cosiddetti “diversamente presenti”).

Questa scelta non è secondaria, perché una delle maggiori risorse inespresse della Sardegna è proprio quella parte di Sardegna che non coincide più, o non coincide ancora, con la residenza anagrafica:

• persone nate nell’Isola e oggi altrove;

• persone cresciute fuori ma legate a famiglie, luoghi, memorie e desideri sardi;

• persone non sarde che hanno scelto o vorrebbero scegliere la Sardegna come luogo di vita, lavoro, ricerca, impresa, cura;

• e persone che non rientrano facilmente nelle categorie tradizionali, ma che potrebbero essere decisive se la Sardegna imparasse a riconoscerle non come eccezioni, ma come parte del proprio capitale umano e sociale.

Il punto di partenza del rapporto è una lacuna. Sappiamo molto, o almeno pensiamo di sapere molto, sui flussi migratori da e verso la Sardegna. Sappiamo quanti partono, quanti rientrano, quali territori perdono popolazione, quali fasce d’età sono più mobili, quali traiettorie si consolidano nel tempo… Ma sappiamo molto meno delle intenzioni, delle preferenze e delle condizioni che precedono queste scelte. Sappiamo poco:

• di chi resterebbe se alcune opportunità fossero diverse;

• di chi tornerebbe se trovasse lavoro qualificato, servizi adeguati, reti professionali, scuole, trasporti, riconoscimento;

• di chi partirebbe non perché non ama la Sardegna, ma perché non vede spazio;

• di chi vive altrove e continua a immaginare un rientro, ma lo percepisce come un salto nel vuoto.

In questo spazio tra desiderio e possibilità si colloca la survey. Non volevamo offrire risposte definitive, né produrre l’ennesima narrazione consolatoria sul ritorno. Piuttosto, volevamo aprire una porta e portare dentro il dibattito pubblico una dimensione spesso trascurata: le persone non si muovono soltanto perché spinte da necessità economiche astratte, ma perché valutano insiemi complessi di condizioni. Il lavoro conta, naturalmente, ma contano anche la qualità della vita, la famiglia, i legami sociali, l’accesso ai servizi, la possibilità di crescere professionalmente, la fiducia nel contesto, la percezione che un territorio sappia accogliere competenze, aspirazioni e differenze.

È qui che l’indagine, secondo noi, diventa particolarmente rilevante perché costringe a superare due semplificazioni opposte.

1. La prima è quella secondo cui partire sarebbe sempre una sconfitta.

2. La seconda è quella secondo cui tornare sarebbe sempre una scelta romantica.

In realtà, partire può essere una forma di crescita, esplorazione, libertà, apprendimento. E tornare, se non sostenuto da condizioni reali, può trasformarsi in frustrazione. Allo stesso modo, restare non è necessariamente immobilismo, e arrivare non è automaticamente integrazione. Ogni verbo (restare, partire, tornare, arrivare) contiene dentro di sé una pluralità di storie, vincoli e possibilità.

Per NODI, questo rapporto si inserisce in un percorso iniziato quasi cinque anni fa da un’intuizione molto semplice: la Sardegna non ha soltanto bisogno di “trattenere” (che brutta parola) persone, ma di riconnettere persone. Persone tra loro, persone con luoghi, competenze con bisogni, esperienze maturate fuori con opportunità ancora da costruire dentro, chi resta con chi parte, chi torna con chi arriva.

Da questa intuizione è nato un movimento dinamico, informale, fluido, costruito più sulle connessioni che sulle strutture, più sulla fiducia che sui ruoli, più sulla capacità di attivare conversazioni e collaborazioni che sulla necessità di rappresentare una categoria.

NODI non è nato come risposta tecnica allo spopolamento. È nato, piuttosto, come tentativo di cambiare il modo in cui guardiamo al capitale umano della Sardegna. Per troppo tempo la discussione pubblica ha oscillato tra nostalgia ed emergenza.

• Da un lato, la retorica della “terra che chiama”, delle radici, del ritorno come dovere morale.

• Dall’altro, la fotografia spesso cupa di un’Isola che perde giovani, popolazione, competenze, futuro.

Entrambe le narrazioni contengono pezzi di verità, ma nessuna delle due basta perché le persone non tornano solo perché vengono “chiamate”, e non restano solo perché viene detto loro che dovrebbero farlo.

Le persone restano, partono, tornano o arrivano quando vedono condizioni credibili per costruire una vita.

Queste sono forse alcune delle domande più serie che la Sardegna (ma in realtà l’Italia) deve porsi oggi: che cosa rende credibile un futuro qui? Non soltanto desiderabile o poeticamente evocabile, ma concretamente credibile. Quali lavori? Quali carriere? Quali ecosistemi professionali? Quali scuole? Quali servizi? Quali connessioni fisiche e digitali? Quale apertura verso chi porta competenze diverse, lingue diverse, esperienze diverse, persino modi diversi di intendere l’appartenenza? Quale capacità di riconoscere che il futuro di un territorio non si costruisce chiedendo alle persone di adattarsi a ciò che già esiste, ma trasformando il contesto in modo che più persone possano contribuire?

Pensiamo che il valore del rapporto CRENoS–NODI stia anche in questo, nel riportare la conversazione sulle condizioni.

Non basta dire che le persone vogliono tornare, che molte non vogliono partire, o celebrare il legame con la Sardegna come se il legame, da solo, potesse compensare salari bassi, opportunità limitate, servizi fragili, carenza di fiducia o difficoltà di accesso alle reti locali. Il legame è una risorsa potentissima, ma non può essere abusato. Non può diventare l’alibi per chiedere alle persone di rinunciare a ciò che altrove hanno trovato: autonomia, crescita, riconoscimento, stabilità, possibilità.

Allo stesso tempo, il rapporto suggerisce che il legame con la Sardegna non è un dettaglio sentimentale da liquidare come nostalgia.

• È un’infrastruttura invisibile.

• È ciò che mantiene aperta una possibilità (anche quando le traiettorie di vita hanno portato altrove).

• È ciò che fa sì che una persona continui a leggere notizie sull’Isola, a immaginare un progetto, a cercare connessioni, a pensare “forse un giorno…”.

Ma affinché quel “forse” diventi scelta, servono condizioni e le condizioni non sono soltanto individuali ma collettive, istituzionali, economiche, culturali.

L’indagine che abbiamo svolto nasce quindi dall’incontro tra due prospettive complementari.

• Da una parte, CRENoS, con la sua capacità di ricerca, analisi economica e lettura dei dati.

• Dall’altra, NODI, con la sua esperienza di comunità, ascolto, connessione e attivazione di persone legate alla Sardegna in modi diversi.

È un incontro importante perché mostra che la conoscenza sui territori non nasce solo nei luoghi formalmente deputati alla ricerca, né solo nell’attivismo civico o nelle reti informali. Nasce quando questi e altri mondi imparano a parlarsi. Quando la ricerca incontra domande emerse dal basso e quando una comunità porta intuizioni, relazioni e accesso a vissuti che spesso sfuggono alle categorie tradizionali. E anche quando i dati non servono a chiudere una discussione, ma ad aprirla meglio.

Anche il “come” della survey conta. Il fatto di rivolgersi sia a persone residenti in Sardegna sia a persone fuori dall’Isola ci ha permesso di evitare una lettura parziale. La mobilità, infatti, non riguarda solo chi se ne va.

• Riguarda anche chi resta e valuta se partire;

• Chi è fuori e valuta se rientrare;

• Chi è arrivato (o vorrebbe arrivare) e cerca un modo per appartenere.

Riguarda famiglie, imprese, università, amministrazioni, scuole, comunità locali; riguarda il modo in cui un territorio si percepisce e viene percepito; riguarda, soprattutto, il passaggio da una Sardegna intesa come luogo di origine a una Sardegna intesa come ecosistema di possibilità.

Questo passaggio è fondamentale, perché se continuiamo a pensare la Sardegna solo come luogo da cui si parte o a cui si torna, rischiamo di ridurre la mobilità a una questione biografica. Invece la mobilità è una questione sistemica.

• Dice qualcosa sulla capacità di un territorio di generare opportunità, assorbire competenze, valorizzare differenze, creare fiducia, facilitare collaborazione.

• Dice qualcosa sulla qualità delle istituzioni, ma anche sulla qualità delle reti informali.

• Dice qualcosa sul mercato del lavoro, ma anche sull’immaginario collettivo.

• E dice qualcosa su ciò che un territorio offre, ma anche su ciò che un territorio permette di costruire.

In questo senso, il rapporto non riguarda soltanto la Sardegna che perde o recupera popolazione ma anche la Sardegna che vuole capire che tipo di relazione intende avere con le proprie persone, ovunque esse si trovino. Per molto tempo, il rapporto con la diaspora o con chi vive fuori è stato spesso episodico, simbolico, legato alla nostalgia, alla rappresentanza, all’orgoglio identitario o a forme di valorizzazione culturale importanti ma non sufficienti.

Oggi serve un salto di qualità. Serve passare da una relazione affettiva a una relazione anche progettuale. Da “non dimenticatevi di noi” a “costruiamo insieme condizioni perché il legame diventi capacità trasformativa”. Da “tornate, per favore!” a “vediamo cosa deve cambiare perché tornare, restare o contribuire da lontano siano opzioni reali”.

Questo è uno dei terreni su cui NODI ha provato a lavorare fin dall’inizio. Non con grandi budget o con strutture complesse, e non aspettando che qualcun altro definisse il nostro perimetro dell’azione. Ma creando spazi di conversazione, occasioni di incontro, reti tra persone, collaborazioni tra chi aveva esperienze diverse e spesso non si sarebbe mai incrociato.

In questo lavoro, l’obiettivo non era semplicemente “fare networking” (parola ormai consumata e spesso ridotta a scambio di contatti). L’obiettivo era (ed è tutt’ora) costruire infrastruttura civica: fiducia tra persone che non si conoscono ancora, collaborazione tra chi non si deve nulla, disponibilità a contribuire non solo quando esiste un ritorno immediato e individuale, ma quando il beneficio riguarda un ecosistema più ampio.

Questa distinzione è cruciale, perché il futuro della Sardegna non dipenderà soltanto dalla capacità di attrarre investimenti, turisti, nomadi digitali, professionisti o rientri qualificati ma:

• dalla capacità di orchestrare energie diverse senza ridurle a iniziative isolate;

• dalla capacità di creare ponti tra competenze e territori, tra università e comunità;

• locali, tra imprese e persone formate altrove, tra amministrazioni e cittadinanza attiva, tra chi ha conoscenze tecniche e chi conosce profondamente i luoghi;

• dalla capacità di passare da un approccio frammentato a un approccio ecosistemico.

Questa indagine va quindi letta non come punto di arrivo, ma come strumento di lavoro. I dati servono a rendere più precise le domande. Chi vuole partire, e perché? Chi vorrebbe restare, ma a quali condizioni? Chi immagina un rientro, e cosa lo renderebbe possibile? Quale peso hanno lavoro, famiglia, qualità della vita, servizi, fiducia, costo della vita, reti professionali, prospettive per i figli? Quali trade-off sono disposte ad accettare le persone pur di vivere in Sardegna? E quali invece non possono o non vogliono più accettare?

Queste domande sono scomode perché spostano la responsabilità dal piano individuale a quello collettivo.

È più facile dire che i giovani partono perché non hanno pazienza, che chi vive fuori non vuole davvero tornare, che chi arriva non capisce il territorio, che chi resta si accontenta, che chi rientra pretende troppo. È più difficile riconoscere che molte scelte individuali sono risposte razionali a condizioni sistemiche. Ed è ancora più difficile accettare che cambiare queste condizioni richiede lavoro lungo, coordinato, multidisciplinare, spesso poco visibile, raramente riconducibile al merito di un singolo attore.

Ma noi pensiamo che sia proprio qui che si giochi la partita. Se vogliamo parlare seriamente di futuro della Sardegna, dobbiamo smettere di cercare scorciatoie narrative.

• Non basterà dire che la qualità della vita è alta se poi le opportunità professionali sono troppo limitate.

• Non basterà parlare di “borghi” e aree interne se non affrontiamo mobilità, servizi, scuole, sanità, connessioni, lavoro qualificato.

• Non basterà celebrare il rientro dei talenti se non esistono contesti capaci di assorbirli e valorizzarli.

• Non basterà attrarre persone dall’esterno se non costruiamo comunità realmente aperte, capaci di includere senza chiedere assimilazione totale.

• Non basterà parlare di innovazione se continuiamo a trattarla come settore e non come metodo.

Il tema della willingness to pay per vivere o tornare in Sardegna è particolarmente interessante proprio perché costringe a rendere espliciti i compromessi. Quanto vale, per una persona, vivere in un luogo a cui si sente legata? Quanto può compensare la qualità della vita rispetto a minori opportunità economiche? Fino a che punto il legame familiare o territoriale può bilanciare una perdita di reddito, una minore crescita professionale o servizi meno accessibili? E quando invece il costo personale diventa troppo alto?

Domande di questo tipo aiutano a superare l’idea generica secondo cui “tutti vorrebbero tornare se potessero”. Forse molti vorrebbero, ma quel “se potessero” è il vero oggetto politico, economico e sociale della discussione.

Il rapporto invita quindi a guardare alla mobilità non come fatalità, ma come campo di intervento. Le intenzioni non sono destino ma segnali. Sono informazioni preziose su ciò che potrebbe accadere se alcune condizioni cambiassero. In questo senso, ascoltare le intenzioni significa guadagnare tempo. Significa intervenire:

• prima che una partenza diventi definitiva,

• prima che un rientro venga abbandonato,

• prima che un legame si indebolisca,

• prima che una persona smetta di considerare la Sardegna come possibilità.

Significa passare da una politica della rincorsa a una politica dell’anticipazione.

Naturalmente, nessuna survey può esaurire la complessità del tema. Non può rappresentare ogni storia, ogni territorio, ogni generazione, ogni professione, ogni forma di appartenenza. Non può sostituire analisi longitudinali, politiche pubbliche, progettazione territoriale, ascolto qualitativo, sperimentazione concreta. Ma può:

• creare una base comune da cui partire

• rendere visibili sfumature che spesso restano nascoste

• aiutare istituzioni, comunità, imprese, università e società civile a discutere meno per impressioni e più a partire da evidenze

• e soprattutto legittimare domande che molte persone si pongono da anni in modo individuale, ma che raramente trovano spazio in una conversazione collettiva strutturata.

Per NODI, il significato del rapporto è anche dimostrare che una comunità nata dal basso può contribuire a produrre conoscenza utile. Non soltanto eventi, conversazioni, post, incontri, reti informali ma anche domande di ricerca, raccolta di dati, collaborazione con Regione, università e altri stakeholder, restituzione pubblica.

Questo è un passaggio importante perché conferma che l’infrastruttura civica non è alternativa alla conoscenza scientifica, così come la ricerca non è alternativa all’attivazione sociale. Al contrario, quando si incontrano, possono rafforzarsi a vicenda.

In fondo, ciò che stiamo costruendo con NODI è un modo diverso di intendere il legame con la Sardegna. Un legame meno proprietario e più generativo; meno chiuso sulla provenienza e più aperto al contributo; meno concentrato sul “chi sei” e più interessato a “cosa possiamo costruire insieme”. Un legame che non chiede alle persone di scegliere una volta per tutte tra dentro e fuori, restare e partire, appartenenza e mobilità. Perché molte vite contemporanee non funzionano più così.

• Si può essere profondamente legati a un luogo e vivere altrove.

• Si può contribuire da lontano.

• Si può arrivare da fuori e prendersi cura di un territorio.

• Si può tornare dopo anni e sentirsi allo stesso tempo parte e stranieri.

• Si può restare e avere bisogno di nuove reti per non sentirsi isolati.

La Sardegna ha bisogno di imparare a leggere queste traiettorie non come anomalie, ma come risorse. Ha bisogno di strumenti per trasformare i legami dispersi in capacità collettiva. Ha bisogno di fiducia nel sistema e la fiducia non si ricostruisce soltanto dichiarandola ma creando occasioni in cui persone diverse possano incontrarsi, riconoscersi, collaborare e produrre valore condiviso. Si ricostruisce rendendo credibile l’idea che contribuire non sia ingenuo, che restare non sia rassegnazione, che partire non sia tradimento, che tornare non sia regressione, che arrivare non sia invasione.

Infine, con questo rapporto volevamo ricordare (e ricordarci) che dietro ogni movimento c’è una domanda di possibilità.

• Chi parte spesso chiede possibilità che non trova.

• Chi resta chiede che la propria scelta non venga data per scontata.

• Chi torna chiede condizioni per non dover sacrificare troppo.

• Chi arriva chiede spazi per essere incluso e contribuire.

• Chi vive fuori chiede che il proprio legame non venga ridotto a nostalgia.

E la Sardegna, se vuole affrontare seriamente il proprio futuro, deve imparare ad ascoltare tutte queste domande insieme.

Non si tratta di convincere tutti a restare, né di riportare tutti indietro. Sarebbe irrealistico e, forse, neppure desiderabile. Si tratta di ampliare il campo delle scelte possibili e fare in modo che:

• partire sia una scelta e non una necessità;

• restare sia un progetto e non un ripiego;

• tornare sia praticabile e non eroico;

• arrivare sia un processo di integrazione reciproca e non una parentesi;

• contribuire alla Sardegna non dipenda soltanto da dove si vive, ma da come si viene messi nelle condizioni di partecipare.

Questa, forse, è la sfida più grande. Non trattenere persone dentro un perimetro, ma costruire un ecosistema abbastanza vivo, aperto e credibile da permettere a più persone di immaginarsi parte del suo futuro. Con questa indagine non pretendiamo di risolvere questa sfida, ma vogliamo continuare ad offrire un punto di partenza concreto per affrontarla con più precisione, meno retorica e più responsabilità.

Prima che una persona parta, resti, torni o arrivi, c’è sempre un momento in cui valuta se un luogo può contenere la vita che desidera costruire. Se vogliamo davvero occuparci del futuro dei nostri territori, dobbiamo imparare a stare dentro quel momento. Non dopo però (quando la scelta è già fatta) ma prima, quando le condizioni possono ancora cambiare.

Link diretto al Report

Presentazione delle realtà promotrici

Staying, leaving, returning: reading Sardinian mobility before it becomes destiny

(English summary of the original article in Italian)

For too long, Sardinia’s demographic debate has been dominated by familiar words: depopulation, emigration, return, brain drain, villages emptying, skills leaving and not coming back. These expressions describe real phenomena, but when repeated too often they risk becoming formulas, and formulas, even when they begin as explanations, can end up hiding the questions that matter most.

The CRENoS–NODI report Staying, Leaving, Returning: Intentions and Conditions tries to shift the focus from migration as a statistical fact to mobility as a human and systemic process. Rather than simply counting who leaves and who arrives, it asks what people are thinking before a decision becomes a number: who would stay if conditions changed, who would return if credible opportunities existed, who might leave not because they reject Sardinia, but because they cannot see enough space for their life, work or future there.

Based on 1,005 responses, including 544 from residents in Sardinia and 461 from people living elsewhere but still connected to the island, the survey explores intentions to leave, possibilities of return, emotional and professional ties, mobility factors and willingness to accept trade-offs in order to live in or return to Sardinia. This approach is important because Sardinia is not made only of those who physically live there. It is also made of those who remain connected from elsewhere: people born on the island and now abroad or on the mainland, people with family roots or memories, non-Sardinians who imagine Sardinia as a place to live, work or contribute, and many others who do not fit traditional categories but may still be part of its human and social capital.

The report challenges two simplistic ideas: that leaving is always a defeat, and that returning is always romantic. Leaving can be growth, freedom and learning; returning, without real conditions, can become frustration. Likewise, staying is not necessarily passivity, and arriving is not automatically integration. Each verb contains different stories, constraints and possibilities.

For NODI, the report is part of a broader effort to change how Sardinia thinks about its people. The island does not simply need to “retain” people, a word that already sounds wrong; it needs to reconnect them: those who stay with those who leave, those who return with those who arrive, skills developed elsewhere with needs and opportunities still to be built locally. The real question is not whether people love Sardinia, because many clearly do, but whether Sardinia can make a future there credible: with qualified work, services, schools, transport, professional networks, trust, openness and institutional capacity.

The value of the survey lies precisely in bringing the conversation back to conditions. Emotional ties are powerful, but they cannot compensate indefinitely for low wages, weak services, limited careers or fragile local networks. At the same time, those ties should not be dismissed as nostalgia. They are an invisible infrastructure that keeps a possibility alive, the quiet “perhaps one day” that can become a choice only if the context changes.

Ultimately, the report invites Sardinia to treat mobility not as fate, but as a field of intervention. Intentions are not destiny; they are signals. Listening to them means acting before a departure becomes final, before a return is abandoned, before a bond weakens, before someone stops imagining Sardinia as a possible place for their future. The challenge is not to bring everyone back or keep everyone inside a perimeter, but to widen the range of real choices: so that leaving is not a necessity, staying is not a compromise, returning is not heroic, arriving is not temporary, and contributing to Sardinia does not depend only on where one lives.

Dall’articolo dell’avv. Paolo Greco, esperto di diritto internazionale e sindaco di Caprarica di Lecce, una riflessione sul recupero degli immobili fatiscenti, sugli affitti transitori e su una nuova strategia per rigenerare i territori italiani

In un articolo pubblicato su In Puglia tutto l’anno, dal titolo “Quel patrimonio dimenticato. Gli immobili fatiscenti e le idee per la rinascita”, l’avv. Paolo Greco, esperto di diritto internazionale e sindaco di Caprarica di Lecce, affronta un tema che parte dal Salento ma riguarda, in realtà, una parte enorme dell’Italia: il destino degli immobili abbandonati, fatiscenti, collabenti, urbanisticamente complicati o semplicemente lasciati fuori da ogni funzione utile. Non parla soltanto di case vecchie, né di ruderi romantici da fotografare, né di borghi da trasformare nell’ennesima scenografia per visitatori di passaggio. Parla di un patrimonio edilizio dimenticato che, se resta vuoto, produce degrado, insicurezza, perdita di valore e impoverimento della vita comunitaria, ma che, se viene letto e governato con intelligenza, può diventare una delle leve più concrete per ricostruire abitabilità, lavoro, servizi e presenza nei piccoli centri.

La forza dell’articolo di Greco sta proprio nel non trattare il tema come una questione puramente estetica. Una finestra chiusa, un tetto sfondato, un cancello arrugginito o un fabbricato che nessuno riesce più a usare non sono soltanto dettagli di paesaggio. Sono segnali di un sistema che si è bloccato. Un immobile abbandonato dentro o vicino a un centro abitato non è mai neutro: interrompe la continuità urbana, abbassa la percezione di sicurezza, scoraggia nuovi residenti, rende più fragile il commercio di prossimità, indebolisce la fiducia di chi vorrebbe investire e, in molti casi, impedisce persino di rispondere a bisogni abitativi molto concreti. Greco cita dati particolarmente significativi sul Salento, ricordando la forte presenza di immobili inutilizzabili e la crescita del fenomeno negli ultimi anni, ma il suo ragionamento va oltre il dato statistico. Il punto non è soltanto quanti ruderi ci siano. Il punto è che cosa producono quei vuoti quando vengono lasciati fuori da ogni progetto.

Uno dei passaggi più interessanti dell’articolo riguarda il rapporto tra patrimonio edilizio e vita reale dei territori. Greco osserva che non basta domandarsi quanti visitatori arrivino in un luogo, se poi non ci si chiede chi possa restare, dove possa vivere, a quali condizioni e con quali servizi. È un cambio di prospettiva importante, perché per troppi anni il discorso sui borghi italiani è stato costruito intorno a parole seducenti ma spesso poco operative: autenticità, bellezza, tradizione, lentezza, paesaggio. Tutte cose vere, naturalmente, ma insufficienti se non si traducono in case abitabili, contratti sostenibili, servizi accessibili, connessioni, manutenzione, opportunità di reddito e forme di presenza distribuite durante l’anno. Un paese non vive perché è bello. Vive se qualcuno lo usa, lo attraversa, lo abita, lo mantiene, lo racconta, lo lavora e lo sceglie non soltanto per un fine settimana.

È qui che la riflessione di Paolo Greco diventa particolarmente vicina al lavoro che ITS Italy ha deciso di sviluppare proprio in territori come Caprarica di Lecce, uno dei Comuni nei quali abbiamo scelto di investire. Caprarica non è interessante perché rappresenta un’eccezione pittoresca, ma perché rappresenta bene una condizione molto italiana: un piccolo centro con una forte identità locale, vicino a poli più grandi, inserito in un territorio ad alta attrattività, con un patrimonio edilizio sottoutilizzato e con la necessità di immaginare nuove forme di abitabilità che non siano né semplice residenza tradizionale né solo turismo breve. In luoghi come questo, il recupero degli immobili non può essere pensato come un esercizio immobiliare isolato. Deve diventare parte di una strategia più ampia, capace di collegare case, servizi, domanda reale, gestione professionale e obiettivi di rigenerazione.

Per questo pensiamo che il tema degli affitti transitori e di medio termine sia una delle chiavi più intelligenti su cui lavorare. Non perché il turismo breve non abbia valore, anzi: in molti territori continua a essere una componente fondamentale dell’economia locale. Ma il turismo breve, da solo, non basta a rigenerare un paese. Può portare reddito, può aumentare la visibilità, può aiutare alcuni proprietari a ristrutturare, ma rischia anche di concentrare tutto in poche settimane, di lasciare immobili chiusi per gran parte dell’anno e di trasformare i centri storici in spazi utilizzati più come prodotto che come luogo. Gli affitti transitori e di medio termine, invece, intercettano una domanda diversa: lavoratori stagionali che non trovano casa, professionisti che potrebbero vivere alcuni mesi in un territorio, imprese che hanno bisogno di sistemazioni temporanee per collaboratori e consulenti, famiglie che stanno valutando un trasferimento, studenti, ricercatori, lavoratori da remoto, persone che non vogliono semplicemente visitare un luogo, ma provarlo.

Questa distinzione è decisiva. Chi resta due, tre, sei o nove mesi non è un turista nel senso tradizionale. Compra nei negozi locali, usa servizi, chiama artigiani, conosce persone, frequenta bar e ristoranti anche fuori stagione, crea domanda di manutenzione, porta competenze, costruisce relazioni e, soprattutto, produce quotidianità. In molti piccoli centri italiani, la vera sfida non sarà soltanto aumentare il numero dei visitatori, ma trasformare una parte della presenza temporanea in quasi-residenza, cioè in una forma di abitare più leggera della residenza stabile ma molto più utile, continua e fertile del consumo turistico occasionale.

L’articolo di Greco è importante anche perché richiama la necessità di strumenti urbanistici più intelligenti e più aderenti alla realtà locale. Non tutti gli immobili sono uguali, non tutti i centri storici hanno gli stessi problemi, non tutte le aree rurali vanno trattate allo stesso modo, non tutti i fabbricati compromessi possono essere recuperati con la stessa logica. Greco parla, in sostanza, di una urbanistica di prossimità, capace di distinguere, semplificare, accompagnare e rendere possibile il riuso. È un punto essenziale, perché una parte del patrimonio dimenticato non resta ferma per mancanza di desiderio o di potenziale, ma perché l’incontro tra proprietà, norme, investimenti e destinazioni d’uso è troppo complicato. Proprietà frammentate, eredità bloccate, conformità urbanistiche incerte, costi di recupero non prevedibili, paura della gestione e assenza di modelli professionali finiscono per produrre immobilismo. E l’immobilismo, in un centro abitato, non è mai innocuo.

La questione, però, non è soltanto salentina. Il Salento offre dati molto interessanti e, in alcuni casi, molto preoccupanti, ma il tema è nazionale. Dalla Puglia interna alla Sicilia, dalla Calabria all’Abruzzo, dall’Appennino alla Toscana rurale, dalle Marche all’Umbria, fino ai piccoli Comuni vicini a città universitarie, aree produttive o destinazioni turistiche forti, l’Italia è piena di immobili vuoti in luoghi dove una domanda abitativa esiste già o potrebbe essere costruita. Il paradosso è evidente: ci sono case inutilizzate e ci sono persone che avrebbero bisogno di case; ci sono borghi che cercano nuove presenze e ci sono professionisti, lavoratori, famiglie e imprese che potrebbero usare quei luoghi in modo nuovo; ci sono proprietari che non sanno come recuperare o gestire i propri beni e ci sono investitori che spesso non trovano progetti ordinati, trasparenti e scalabili.

Per uscire da questo paradosso servono iniziative concrete.

La prima è una mappatura seria degli immobili recuperabili, non come inventario generico di ruderi, ma come strumento operativo capace di distinguere tra immobili immediatamente riattivabili, immobili recuperabili con interventi ordinari, immobili che richiedono operazioni più complesse e immobili che, almeno nel breve periodo, non hanno una reale sostenibilità tecnica o economica.

La seconda è la creazione di percorsi di accompagnamento per proprietari e investitori, perché il piccolo proprietario spesso non ha competenze, tempo o fiducia per affrontare da solo urbanistica, fiscalità, contratti, lavori e gestione, mentre l’investitore esterno rischia di leggere male il territorio se non viene inserito in una strategia locale chiara.

La terza iniziativa riguarda la costruzione di modelli professionali per l’affitto transitorio e di medio termine, con standard minimi di qualità, contratti chiari, manutenzione programmata, gestione degli ingressi e delle uscite, garanzie per i proprietari e servizi reali per chi arriva. Molti immobili non vengono rimessi sul mercato non solo perché sono da ristrutturare, ma perché chi li possiede teme problemi di gestione, danni, morosità, burocrazia e incertezza.

La quarta iniziativa è ragionare non sulla singola casa, ma su portafogli immobiliari diffusi. Una casa recuperata può essere un buon investimento; dieci, venti o trenta case recuperate e gestite in modo coordinato possono diventare una vera infrastruttura territoriale, capace di generare economie di scala, manutenzione più efficiente, promozione comune, servizi condivisi e un rapporto più solido con imprese, amministrazioni e comunità locali.

La quinta iniziativa, forse la più importante, è collegare il recupero immobiliare ai servizi. Una casa recuperata, da sola, non rigenera un paese. Una casa recuperata dentro una rete di mobilità, connessioni digitali, spazi di lavoro, artigiani, commercio locale, cultura, presidio amministrativo e servizi essenziali può invece diventare parte di un ecosistema. La rigenerazione non nasce dai muri, ma dall’uso dei muri. Non nasce dal fatto che un immobile sia tornato bello, ma dal fatto che torni utile.

In questo senso, il lavoro di Paolo Greco e il caso di Caprarica di Lecce ci interessano perché indicano una direzione concreta. Non una narrazione generica sui borghi, non una celebrazione del passato, non un invito a trasformare ogni pietra in prodotto turistico, ma un ragionamento più maturo su come il patrimonio dimenticato possa tornare a essere funzione, presenza, abitabilità e futuro. Da qui passa anche una parte del lavoro di ITS Italy: individuare immobili recuperabili, costruire modelli sostenibili, attivare investimenti intelligenti, sperimentare affitti transitori e di medio termine, collaborare con territori che non vogliono semplicemente essere guardati, ma tornare a funzionare.

La domanda decisiva, allora, non è soltanto quanti turisti arriveranno. È chi potrà restare. Non è soltanto quanto varrà una casa ristrutturata. È quanta vita produrrà. Non è soltanto come recuperare un rudere. È come trasformare il patrimonio dimenticato in una nuova infrastruttura dell’abitare.

Ed è per questo che l’articolo dell’avv. Paolo Greco merita attenzione ben oltre i confini del Salento. Perché racconta un problema locale, ma intercetta una questione italiana: il futuro di molti territori non dipenderà da una grande soluzione astratta, ma da molte operazioni precise, realistiche e coordinate. Recuperare immobili fatiscenti per renderli abitabili, utilizzabili e gestibili non è solo una scelta immobiliare. È una politica di territorio. E, se fatta bene, può essere una delle più intelligenti.

When Ruins Become Future: Paolo Greco’s Lesson on Italy’s Forgotten Property Heritage

Starting from an article by Avv. Paolo Greco, expert in international law and Mayor of Caprarica di Lecce, a reflection on derelict buildings, temporary and mid-term rentals, and a new strategy for regenerating Italian territories

In an article published in In Puglia tutto l’anno, entitled “Quel patrimonio dimenticato. Gli immobili fatiscenti e le idee per la rinascita”, Avv. Paolo Greco, expert in international law and Mayor of Caprarica di Lecce, addresses an issue that begins in Salento but in reality concerns a very large part of Italy: the future of abandoned, derelict, collapsing, planning-trapped or simply unused buildings. He is not merely writing about old houses, romantic ruins to be photographed, or villages to be turned into yet another backdrop for passing visitors. He is writing about a forgotten property heritage which, if left empty, produces decay, insecurity, loss of value and a weakening of community life, but which, if understood and governed intelligently, can become one of the most concrete levers for rebuilding liveability, work, services and presence in smaller towns.

The strength of Greco’s article lies precisely in the fact that it does not treat the issue as a purely aesthetic one. A closed window, a collapsed roof, a rusty gate or a building that no one can use any longer are not simply details of the landscape. They are signs of a system that has become stuck. An abandoned property within or near an inhabited centre is never neutral: it interrupts urban continuity, lowers the perception of safety, discourages new residents, weakens local commerce, undermines the confidence of those who might invest and, in many cases, even prevents territories from responding to very practical housing needs. Greco quotes particularly significant data on Salento, pointing to the strong presence of unusable buildings and the growth of the phenomenon over recent years, but his reasoning goes beyond statistics. The issue is not only how many ruins there are. The issue is what those empty spaces produce when they are left outside any project.

One of the most interesting passages in the article concerns the relationship between property heritage and the real life of territories. Greco observes that it is not enough to ask how many visitors arrive in a place if we do not also ask who can stay, where they can live, under what conditions and with which services. This is an important shift in perspective, because for too many years the conversation about Italian villages has been built around seductive but often weakly operational words: authenticity, beauty, tradition, slowness, landscape. All of these things are true, of course, but they are not enough unless they become habitable homes, sustainable contracts, accessible services, connections, maintenance, income opportunities and forms of presence spread throughout the year. A town does not live because it is beautiful. It lives if someone uses it, crosses it, inhabits it, maintains it, tells its story, works in it and chooses it for more than just a weekend.

This is where Paolo Greco’s reflection becomes particularly close to the work that ITS Italy has decided to develop in territories such as Caprarica di Lecce, one of the municipalities where we have chosen to invest. Caprarica is not interesting because it is a picturesque exception, but because it represents very well a deeply Italian condition: a small town with a strong local identity, close to larger centres, located in a highly attractive territory, with underused property heritage and with the need to imagine new forms of liveability that are neither traditional permanent residence nor short-term tourism alone. In places such as this, the recovery of buildings cannot be treated as an isolated property exercise. It must become part of a wider strategy capable of connecting homes, services, real demand, professional management and regeneration objectives.

This is why we believe that temporary and mid-term rentals are one of the most intelligent keys to work on. Not because short-term tourism has no value; quite the opposite. In many territories, it remains a fundamental component of the local economy. But short-term tourism alone is not enough to regenerate a town. It can bring income, increase visibility and help some owners renovate, but it may also concentrate everything into a few weeks, leave properties closed for much of the year and turn historic centres into spaces used more as a product than as a place. Temporary and mid-term rentals, on the other hand, intercept a different demand: seasonal workers who cannot find accommodation, professionals who could live in a territory for several months, companies needing temporary housing for collaborators and consultants, families considering relocation, students, researchers, remote workers and people who do not simply want to visit a place, but to test it.

This distinction is crucial. Someone who stays for two, three, six or nine months is not a tourist in the traditional sense. They shop locally, use services, call craftsmen, meet people, go to cafés and restaurants outside the peak season, create demand for maintenance, bring skills, build relationships and, above all, produce everyday life. In many smaller Italian towns, the real challenge will not only be to increase the number of visitors, but to turn part of temporary presence into near-residence: a way of living that is lighter than permanent residence but much more useful, continuous and fertile than occasional tourist consumption.

Greco’s article is also important because it recalls the need for planning tools that are more intelligent and more closely connected to local reality. Not all properties are the same, not all historic centres have the same problems, not all rural areas should be treated in the same way, and not all compromised buildings can be recovered with the same logic. Greco is essentially calling for proximity-based urban planning, capable of distinguishing, simplifying, supporting and making reuse possible. This is essential, because part of the forgotten property heritage remains stuck not because there is no desire or potential, but because the meeting point between ownership, rules, investment and use is too complicated. Fragmented ownership, blocked inheritances, uncertain planning compliance, unpredictable recovery costs, fear of management and the absence of professional models all produce paralysis. And paralysis, in an inhabited centre, is never harmless.

The issue, however, is not only about Salento. Salento offers very interesting and, in some cases, very worrying data, but the theme is national. From inland Puglia to Sicily, from Calabria to Abruzzo, from the Apennines to rural Tuscany, from the Marche to Umbria, and even in smaller municipalities close to university cities, productive areas or strong tourism destinations, Italy is full of empty properties in places where housing demand already exists or could be created. The paradox is clear: there are unused houses and there are people who need houses; there are villages looking for new presences and there are professionals, workers, families and companies that could use those places in a new way; there are owners who do not know how to recover or manage their assets and there are investors who often cannot find orderly, transparent and scalable projects.

To escape this paradox, concrete initiatives are needed. The first is a serious mapping of recoverable properties, not as a generic inventory of ruins, but as an operational tool capable of distinguishing between properties that can be reactivated immediately, properties that can be recovered through ordinary works, properties requiring more complex operations and properties that, at least in the short term, do not have real technical or economic sustainability. The second is the creation of support pathways for owners and investors, because small owners often do not have the skills, time or confidence to deal alone with planning, taxation, contracts, works and management, while external investors risk misunderstanding the territory if they are not inserted into a clear local strategy.

The third initiative concerns the construction of professional models for temporary and mid-term rentals, with minimum quality standards, clear contracts, planned maintenance, check-in and check-out management, guarantees for owners and real services for those who arrive. Many properties are not returned to the market not only because they need renovation, but because their owners fear management problems, damage, arrears, bureaucracy and uncertainty. The fourth initiative is to think not in terms of a single house, but in terms of distributed property portfolios. One recovered house may be a good investment; ten, twenty or thirty recovered houses, managed in a coordinated way, can become a true territorial infrastructure, generating economies of scale, more efficient maintenance, common promotion, shared services and a stronger relationship with companies, administrations and local communities.

The fifth initiative, perhaps the most important, is to connect property recovery to services. One recovered house alone does not regenerate a town. A recovered house within a network of mobility, digital connections, workspaces, craftsmen, local commerce, culture, administrative presence and essential services can instead become part of an ecosystem. Regeneration does not come from walls. It comes from the use of walls. It does not come from the fact that a building has become beautiful again, but from the fact that it has become useful again.

In this sense, Paolo Greco’s work and the case of Caprarica di Lecce interest us because they indicate a concrete direction. Not a generic narrative about villages, not a celebration of the past, not an invitation to turn every stone into a tourism product, but a more mature reflection on how forgotten property heritage can become function, presence, liveability and future. This is also part of ITS Italy’s work: identifying recoverable properties, building sustainable models, activating intelligent investment, experimenting with temporary and mid-term rentals, and collaborating with territories that do not simply want to be looked at, but to function again.

The decisive question, then, is not only how many tourists will arrive. It is who will be able to stay. It is not only how much a renovated property will be worth. It is how much life it will produce. It is not only how to recover a ruin. It is how to turn forgotten property heritage into a new infrastructure for living.

This is why Avv. Paolo Greco’s article deserves attention well beyond Salento. Because it describes a local problem, but captures an Italian question: the future of many territories will not depend on one grand abstract solution, but on many precise, realistic and coordinated operations. Recovering derelict buildings to make them habitable, usable and manageable is not only a property strategy. It is territorial policy. And, if done well, it may be one of the most intelligent.

… a small village in Tuscany, where the beauty of place is inseparable from the patience, humility and responsibility required to engage with it properly.

There is a useful sentence at the heart of ’s recent article, ‘Don’t Blame the Village’: the problem is not necessarily small-town Italy, but the fantasy people bring with them when they buy into it. It is a simple point, almost obvious once stated clearly, and yet it remains one of the most misunderstood truths in the international conversation around Italian villages, cheap houses, rural living and the increasingly romanticised idea that one can purchase a stone house, add a few linen curtains, survive some amusing paperwork, and emerge on the other side as the protagonist of a more authentic life.

The village, in other words, is rarely the problem. The problem is often that people have bought a house as if they were buying a mood board.

I am writing this while physically sitting in one of those villages myself: Buriano, in Tuscany, a small hilltop place in the municipality of Castiglione della Pescaia, not far from the sea and yet very much not reducible to the usual foreign fantasy of “near the sea, therefore easy, romantic and effortlessly desirable”. For several weeks I have been here working on a project, dealing with the heat, with the practical fatigue of making things happen in an old place, with the countless small frictions that come from trying to turn an idea into something real, and also with the more subtle difficulties of understanding local rhythms, local doubts, local memories and, yes, sometimes local diffidence.

That diffidence is not an obstacle to be conquered. It is part of the reality one has to respect.

This is where I think the conversation about Italian villages often goes wrong. People speak about rural Italy as if it were empty space waiting for new energy, new capital and new imagination, when in fact these places are not empty at all. They are full of stories, habits, relationships, private griefs, practical knowledge, family memories, informal economies, disappointments, loyalties, and sometimes very reasonable suspicion towards anyone arriving from elsewhere with big words about regeneration. A village is not a backdrop. It is not a lifestyle package. It is not a cheaper version of Florence with better parking. It is a living social fabric, and entering it requires something more demanding than taste.

This does not mean that outsiders should not buy houses, invest, move, restore, create businesses or bring new ideas. Quite the opposite. Many villages need new residents, new uses, new energy, new services and new forms of economic life if they are not to become museum pieces or seasonal postcards. But the difference between contributing to a place and consuming it is enormous, even when the visual result looks similar from the outside. A renovated house can be an act of care, or it can be an act of extraction. A boutique hospitality project can create value, or it can simply turn local life into scenery for someone else’s idea of authenticity. A foreign buyer can become part of a community, or remain permanently suspended above it, enjoying the view while never really understanding the place.

Tresl’s article is right to insist that small-town life can work perfectly well if one actually wants small-town life. The essential point, however, is that wanting the image of small-town life is not the same thing as wanting the life itself. It is easy to want the stone walls, the silence, the slower pace, the seasonal produce, the old men in the piazza, the church bells, the hilltop view and the idea that life has somehow become simpler. It is harder to want the winter, the distance, the limited services, the need for a car, the closed shops, the paperwork, the local politics, the difficulty of finding workers at the exact moment one needs them, and the reality that not every solution can be imported from Milan, London, New York or wherever one’s previous idea of efficiency was formed.

This is also where due diligence has to become much more serious than the standard property checklist. It is not enough to ask whether the roof is sound, whether the asking price is low, whether the beach is close, whether there is fibre in the municipality, or whether the house looks magical in the late afternoon light. One has to ask whether the place is liveable in February, whether the road is manageable in bad weather, whether the internet reaches that specific house rather than a more fortunate street nearby, whether local tradespeople are available and willing to work there, whether the town has a functioning relationship with its own future, whether there are services that matter beyond the tourist season, and whether one is prepared to live with a level of inconvenience that may be charming for a week and exhausting after three months.

But even that is not enough. There is another layer of research, more uncomfortable and more important, which concerns the community itself. Who lives there all year? What has the village already lost? What does it still protect? What do local people think is needed, rather than what an outsider imagines would look good in a brochure? Who are the people who know how things actually work? What stories are at risk of disappearing? What local skills could be supported rather than replaced? What would regeneration mean if it began not with property values, but with the dignity and usefulness of the people already there?

This is very close to the principle behind the work we try to do with ITS Italy. The point is not to arrive as expats, or as urban citizens with vaguely colonial expectations about how smaller places should be “improved”, but to support and enable projects with local people and, where possible, by local people. Regeneration should not mean repainting walls, opening elegant accommodation and writing poetic captions about authenticity while the actual community remains peripheral to the story. It should mean creating conditions in which local histories, local abilities and local ambitions can become part of the future economy of a place.

That distinction matters because Italy has become extremely good at selling the imagery of its fragile places, often much better than it is at supporting the people who keep those places alive. International media love the abandoned house, the €1 property, the medieval village saved by foreigners, the romantic couple who “escaped” the city and found meaning among olive trees, as if meaning were simply waiting in the landscape rather than built through relationships, responsibility and time. There is nothing wrong with romance, and there is certainly nothing wrong with beauty, but beauty without responsibility becomes consumption. It allows people to enjoy the village aesthetically while avoiding the less photogenic question of what their presence actually does to the place.

In Buriano, as in many other small Italian villages, one quickly understands that the peace of the place is not passive. It is not a decorative silence. It is made of lives that have accumulated there, of families who have stayed or left, of people who have seen projects come and go, of houses that carry more memory than their square metres suggest. Working here requires patience not because the village is backward, but because the village is not a blank sheet. There are reasons why people hesitate. There are reasons why trust is slow. There are reasons why “the obvious solution” brought from outside may not be the right one locally.

Sometimes this is frustrating. Of course it is. There are days when one would like decisions to move faster, conversations to be simpler, suppliers to appear immediately, bureaucracy to become logical, and every practical problem to accept the neat solution one had in mind. But that impatience is revealing, because it shows exactly where the outsider’s fantasy ends and the real work begins. If the only version of village life one can tolerate is the version that adapts immediately to one’s expectations, then one does not want the village. One wants a set.

This is why the more serious conversation about rural Italy should move beyond the lazy binary of “villages are magical” versus “villages are impossible”. Both are false, or at least incomplete. Villages can be extraordinary, but not because they suspend reality. They are extraordinary precisely because they are real: limited, beautiful, inconvenient, generous, difficult, slow, human, sometimes suspicious, sometimes unexpectedly supportive, and often much more complex than the person buying a cheap house has been led to believe.

The practical lesson is therefore not “do not buy in a village”. That would be far too blunt, and in many cases wrong. The lesson is also not “follow your dream”, which is the sort of advice that has helped create half the problem. The lesson is: understand the life attached to the property before pretending the property will transform your life. Rent first if possible. Visit out of season. Spend time there when nobody is trying to impress you. Speak to those who live there all year. Understand services, costs, climate, access, tax, resale, renovation, healthcare, schools, transport and internet. But also understand the people, because the people are not an accessory to the landscape.

For international buyers, this requires humility. For Italian institutions and local actors, it requires strategy. For those of us working on projects of regeneration, hospitality, territorial development or cultural repositioning, it requires a discipline that is both practical and ethical: we must resist the temptation to turn villages into branded experiences detached from their own communities. The future of rural Italy cannot depend only on outsiders discovering it, buying it, aestheticising it and then leaving when the reality becomes too heavy. It has to be built through models that make local participation possible, local value visible and local stories economically relevant without reducing them to folklore.

So yes, do not blame the village. Blame the fantasy, the bad research, the cheap-house headline, the estate-agent poetry, the social media reel, the foreign buyer who thinks charm is infrastructure, and the urban professional who arrives with the quiet conviction that a place is improved the moment it becomes legible to people like them.

But after that, do something more useful than blaming. Listen. Stay longer. Ask better questions. Work with the people who are already there. Accept that the solution you would normally choose may not be the right one in that place. Understand that regeneration is not just the renovation of buildings, but the patient construction of trust, usefulness and shared value.

A village can be a wonderful place to live, invest, work or build something meaningful. But only if one accepts that the real project is not simply buying a house. The real project is learning how to belong without pretending to own the story.

Per gli 80 anni della Vespa, oltre diecimila scooter hanno attraversato Roma tra Colosseo e Foro Romano, ricordandoci che certi cliché italiani, per quanto abusati, restano veri perché sanno ancora muoversi, sorridere e fare rumore nel modo giusto.

Ci scusiamo in anticipo per il cliché, perché sappiamo benissimo che Roma, il Colosseo, la Vespa, la libertà, la dolce vita e quell’idea un po’ cinematografica dell’Italia che profuma di estate, sampietrini e motori piccoli ma ostinatamente felici sono materiale pericolosissimo, da cartolina, da brochure turistica, da poster appeso in un bar di San Francisco da qualcuno che pronuncia “espresso” come se fosse una password segreta. Eppure, ogni tanto, il cliché ha ragione. Anzi, ogni tanto arriva in massa, con oltre diecimila Vespe, attraversa il centro storico di Roma, passa davanti al Colosseo e al Foro Romano, e ci costringe ad ammettere che alcune immagini resistono non perché siamo pigri, ma perché continuano a funzionare.

Per celebrare gli 80 anni della Vespa, Roma si è trasformata per quattro giorni in una capitale mondiale del due ruote gentile, con appassionati arrivati da tutta Europa, dagli Stati Uniti, dall’Australia, dalle Filippine e da molti altri luoghi in cui, evidentemente, qualcuno ha deciso che la forma più raffinata di nostalgia italiana non è una supercar parcheggiata davanti a un hotel a cinque stelle, ma uno scooter che sembra ancora capace di portarti al mercato, al mare, al primo appuntamento o dentro un film del dopoguerra senza chiedere troppi permessi.

Ed è qui che la Vespa continua a battere quasi tutti sul piano simbolico. Ferrari è desiderio, Ducati è adrenalina, Lamborghini è teatro, ma la Vespa è una cosa più rara: è un oggetto popolare diventato mito senza smettere di sembrare accessibile. Non nasce per impressionare, nasce per muovere un Paese che nel 1946 aveva bisogno di rimettersi in strada, fisicamente e moralmente. Era pratica, economica, urbana, intelligente; poi, siccome l’Italia quando fa bene le cose riesce talvolta a inciampare nell’eleganza senza neppure fingere modestia, è diventata anche bella.

La Vespa è uno dei grandi paradossi del Made in Italy: industriale ma romantica, quotidiana ma iconica, semplice ma riconoscibile al primo sguardo. Ha attraversato ottant’anni di mode, film, pubblicità, turismo, adolescenze, vacanze e ritorni di fiamma vintage senza essere ridotta a un pezzo da museo. Certo, il cinema l’ha aiutata, e Roman Holiday le ha consegnato una patente internazionale di fascino che molti brand pagherebbero volentieri in contanti e dignità. Ma la Vespa è sopravvissuta al proprio mito perché non è rimasta ferma dentro quel mito: ha continuato a circolare, a essere comprata, usata, modificata, restaurata, fotografata, amata e, soprattutto, guidata.

La scena romana degli 80 anni racconta quindi qualcosa che va oltre la festa di marca. Racconta una forma di italianità che non ha bisogno di spiegarsi con lunghi manifesti identitari, perché arriva prima attraverso l’uso, il suono, la postura e l’emozione. La Vespa non è soltanto design; è design che entra nella vita quotidiana. Non è soltanto heritage; è heritage che ancora parcheggia, riparte, sbuffa, supera il traffico e fa sorridere i passanti. Non è soltanto nostalgia; è nostalgia con il casco in mano e una destinazione molto concreta.

E allora sì, è tutto molto prevedibile: Roma, Vespa, Colosseo, libertà, stile italiano. Scusate ancora. Però quando oltre diecimila persone decidono di attraversare la Città Eterna per celebrare uno scooter nato ottant’anni fa e il risultato non sembra una rievocazione polverosa, ma una festa viva, rumorosa, affettuosa e internazionale, forse il problema non è che il cliché sia troppo facile. Forse il punto è che alcuni cliché italiani, ogni tanto, sono semplicemente troppo veri per essere ignorati.

For Vespa’s 80th anniversary, more than ten thousand scooters rolled through Rome, reminding the world that some Italian clichés are not lazy at all: they survive because they still move beautifully.

Let us apologise in advance for the cliché, because we are perfectly aware that Rome, the Colosseum, the Vespa, freedom, summer, cobblestones and that slightly over-polished idea of Italy which seems permanently lit by late afternoon sunshine are all dangerously close to postcard territory. This is the sort of material that normally ends up in travel brochures, airport adverts and framed prints in cafés where someone, somewhere, is still explaining that they once spent three unforgettable days in Tuscany. And yet, every now and then, the cliché wins. It wins because it arrives on two wheels, in extraordinary numbers, making a small, cheerful, unmistakable noise, and suddenly even the most exhausted observer of Italian symbolism has to admit that the image still works.

For Vespa’s 80th anniversary, Rome became, for four days, the world capital of the elegant little scooter, with more than ten thousand Vespas moving through the historic centre, passing the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, and turning ordinary traffic into something that looked suspiciously like collective affection. Riders came from across Europe, from the United States, from Australia, from the Philippines and from many other places where, clearly, someone has decided that the most persuasive form of Italian nostalgia is not a red supercar outside a luxury hotel, but a scooter that still looks as if it could take you to the market, to the seaside, to a first date or straight into a post-war film without asking for permission.

This is why Vespa remains such a powerful object. Ferrari is desire, Ducati is adrenaline, Lamborghini is theatre, but Vespa is something rarer: a popular product that became a myth without losing its democratic face. It was not created to intimidate or impress. It was created in 1946 to help a damaged country move again, practically and emotionally. It was affordable, clever, urban and useful. Then, because Italy at its best has a habit of accidentally turning function into elegance, it also became beautiful.

Vespa is one of the great paradoxes of Made in Italy: industrial but romantic, everyday but iconic, simple but instantly recognisable. Across eighty years it has moved through films, advertisements, family albums, holidays, teenage memories, vintage revivals and global tourism without being trapped entirely inside a museum cabinet. Yes, cinema helped. Of course it did. Roman Holiday gave the scooter a kind of international glamour that many brands would happily buy with both money and dignity. But Vespa survived its own mythology because it did not remain frozen inside it. It kept moving. It kept being bought, ridden, restored, photographed, customised, loved and used.

The Rome celebration therefore tells us something larger than the story of a brand anniversary. It says something about a kind of Italian identity that does not need to be over-explained, because it reaches people first through shape, sound, movement and feeling. Vespa is not merely design; it is design entering daily life. It is not merely heritage; it is heritage that still parks badly, restarts noisily, cuts through traffic and makes strangers smile. It is not merely nostalgia; it is nostalgia wearing a helmet and going somewhere.

So yes, Rome, Vespa, Colosseum, freedom, Italian style: we know, we know. Terribly predictable. Almost criminally easy. But when more than ten thousand people gather in the Eternal City to celebrate a scooter born eighty years ago, and the result does not feel like a dusty commemoration but like a living, noisy, affectionate international party, perhaps the problem is not that the cliché is too obvious. Perhaps the point is that some Italian clichés are still true enough to deserve the road.

There are many things an Italian neighbour can be accused of being. Quiet is rarely one of them.

We may arrive casually, but somehow suspiciously elegant. We may say we are “just passing by”, while carrying enough food to feed a diplomatic delegation. We may bring lasagne, very strong opinions about coffee, and a level of emotional participation in your furniture layout that nobody explicitly requested. We may ask, within the first twelve minutes, where you are from, where you are going, what you are eating, who made the sauce, why the espresso has not appeared yet, and whether you are really sure about those curtains.

But we are also the neighbour who opens the door in the middle of the night, makes coffee without turning it into a philosophical debate - or, at least, tries not to - finds a bottle of limoncello that was apparently “just there”, and somehow turns a small visit into a conversation about home, belonging, work, family, migration, hospitality, language, architecture, and why the table should never be too far from the kitchen. Just don’t mention football (soccer). Not this year.

So when our friends at told us they were turning one and invited ITS Journal to become one of their neighbours for their housewarming, we could hardly say no.

In fact, it would have been rude.

Home Abroad has opened a beautiful interactive Housewarming Wall to celebrate its first birthday, and they are asking one very simple, very large question:

Where in the world are you building a life?

That is the kind of question that looks innocent until you actually try to answer it. Because building a life somewhere is not always the same as living there. It can mean choosing a country, a city, a village, a street, a kitchen table, a community, a project, a language, a person, a routine, or even just a corner of the world where, for reasons you cannot fully explain, your breathing becomes slightly easier.

It can be practical. It can be romantic. It can be temporary. It can be chaotic. It can be a place you moved to, a place you returned to, a place you left behind but still carry with you, or a place you are building slowly, while pretending you have a plan.

And because this is a housewarming, everyone is invited to leave a sentence on the wall.

Where in the world are you building a life?

One sentence is enough. More are welcome. Poetic, practical, funny, sentimental, confused, gloriously overthought - all acceptable forms of participation.

Sign the Housewarming Wall

There is also a small celebration attached to it. Everyone who adds their name to the wall goes into the draw for a “key to the house”: a free year of Home Abroad. Ten keys will be given away, and two people will also be invited to Kaila’s kitchen table for a private half-hour, one-to-one conversation. Entries close on 11 July, and the keys will be drawn live on 13 July.

For us, this invitation felt especially close to home, because ITS Journal spends much of its time telling stories about people who live between places, or who are trying to understand what a place does to a life. We publish stories of foreigners who come to Italy, Italians who live abroad, people who move for work, love, curiosity, survival, reinvention or the slightly dangerous belief that elsewhere might explain something about themselves that home never quite managed to.

We are interested in the practical side of building a life abroad - the houses, the visas, the businesses, the schools, the trains that do or do not arrive, the villages that look romantic until you need a plumber, the cities that look impossible until you discover your own rhythm inside them. But we are also interested in the stranger part: what happens to identity when it stops being tied to one postcode, one accent, one table, one set of habits, one idea of “normal”.

In other words, Home Abroad’s question is exactly our kind of question.

Mamma said: "Go and Sign"

And, like many Italian houses, our own little editorial home has rather more rooms than one might expect from the outside.

There is ITS Journal, where we look at Italy, Italians abroad, foreigners in Italy, and the many ways people build lives across borders. There is - literally, I Leave Whenever I Want - my (meaning, it’s me ) personal corner of the house, for thoughts that do not always sit politely inside a category. There is , for digital nomads and for those who know that working from anywhere is not quite the same thing as collecting passport stamps or placing a laptop near a palm tree. There is Smart Working Magazine, for the Italian world of remote work, hybrid work, HR and workplace transformation. There is Azienda Top, where we look at companies, leadership, innovation and the business culture changing around us. There are the publications we curate, like We the Italians and Startup-News. And soon there will also be , dedicated to what Italian journalists abroad and international journalists in Italy see, write and understand when Italy is no longer just a country, but a point of view.

And then there are other rooms we are preparing. , coming soon (now collecting experiences and stories from our contributors with boots and ciabatte on the ground), will be dedicated to real hospitality experiences rather than commercial reviews, especially in the Italy of scattered villages, small places and diffused hospitality. And because we are Italians, of course we are the publishers of Design Courier, a reference point for the world of hospitality and residential design, written with and for people who actually make spaces work, not just look good in a photograph.

So yes, we have something for almost every taste. Too many rooms, probably too many keys, absolutely no chance of us being minimalist about it.

Proudly fully remote, proudly Italian, and not particularly interested in the idea that being Italian should be reduced to geography.

That is why we are very happy to show up at Home Abroad’s housewarming. Casually dressed, suspiciously elegant, possibly carrying too much food, and definitely asking questions that are simple only until you try to answer them.

So, from our little Italian editorial house to theirs: happy first birthday, Home Abroad.

And to our readers: go and sign the wall. Or else… ☠️

Go and Sign - NOW

Tell them where in the world you are building your life.

And, if nobody has made espresso yet, please do the decent thing.

Con la pubblicazione del decreto attuativo dedicato alle imprese turistiche, diventano finalmente operative le misure di sostegno previste per il settore. Il provvedimento chiarisce in modo definitivo chi può presentare domanda, quali investimenti sono ammissibili e quali sono le modalità di accesso alle agevolazioni.

L’obiettivo è sostenere la riqualificazione e la modernizzazione delle attività che operano nel comparto turistico, con particolare attenzione agli interventi di efficientamento energetico e innovazione.

Chi può beneficiare degli incentivi

Il concetto di turismo adottato dal decreto è piuttosto ampio. Tra i beneficiari rientrano infatti non solo le strutture ricettive, ma anche bar, ristoranti, centri termali e centri congressi. Restano invece esclusi dalle agevolazioni le agenzie di viaggio e i tour operator.

Per poter accedere agli incentivi, le imprese devono essere attive da almeno tre anni e risultare in regola con tutti gli adempimenti fiscali e contributivi.

Sono inoltre ammesse le imprese che, pur non operando formalmente con codici ATECO turistici, possano dimostrare attraverso le proprie scritture contabili di aver realizzato oltre il 50% del fatturato in attività riconducibili al settore turistico nei tre anni precedenti alla presentazione della domanda.

Possono partecipare anche i proprietari degli immobili oggetto dell’investimento agevolato, a condizione che siano costituiti in forma d’impresa e che si avvalgano dei requisiti del gestore della struttura. In questo caso, il gestore deve prestare il proprio consenso e il rapporto tra le parti deve essere mantenuto per tutta la durata dell’investimento.

Il decreto apre inoltre la partecipazione alle imprese con sede legale all’estero. Queste possono presentare domanda a condizione che siano costituite secondo la normativa civile e commerciale vigente nel proprio Paese e regolarmente iscritte nel relativo registro delle imprese. Al momento della presentazione della domanda, devono però dimostrare di disporre di una sede operativa in Italia, essere titolari di codice fiscale o partita IVA italiana e aver adempiuto agli obblighi assicurativi previsti dalla normativa.

Quali investimenti sono ammessi

Per accedere alle agevolazioni è necessario presentare un programma di investimento con spese ammissibili comprese tra 1 e 15 milioni di euro.

È possibile includere nel progetto più unità locali, purché appartenenti alla stessa impresa o a una rete di imprese.

Un requisito fondamentale riguarda la composizione dell’investimento: almeno il 51% delle spese deve essere destinato a interventi di efficientamento energetico. Tra questi rientrano, ad esempio, la realizzazione del cappotto termico, l’installazione di impianti fotovoltaici, la sostituzione dei serramenti e l’adozione di sistemi di riscaldamento e raffrescamento ad alta efficienza.

A tali interventi possono essere affiancate ulteriori spese finalizzate alla modernizzazione dell’attività, come la digitalizzazione dei processi, l’acquisto di software, lavori edili di sistemazione degli ambienti, interventi sugli impianti idrici e la realizzazione di giardini verticali.

Per il dettaglio completo delle spese ammissibili è comunque necessario fare riferimento al testo ufficiale del decreto.

Qual è l’entità del contributo

L’intensità dell’agevolazione varia in funzione della tipologia di investimento e delle caratteristiche dell’impresa beneficiaria.

Il contributo a fondo perduto può arrivare fino al 56% delle spese ammissibili, percentuale riservata alle micro e piccole imprese che soddisfano i requisiti previsti dal bando.

Come e quando presentare la domanda

Le domande potranno essere presentate a partire dalle ore 12:00 del 15 luglio 2026 e fino alle ore 17:00 del 15 settembre 2026.

L’assegnazione delle risorse non avverrà secondo la logica del click day. Le richieste saranno infatti valutate attraverso una graduatoria, permettendo alle imprese di predisporre la candidatura con maggiore attenzione e senza la necessità di presentarla nei primi minuti di apertura dello sportello.

Italy Launches Green Tour 2026: New Funding Opportunities for Tourism Companies

With the publication of the implementing decree dedicated to tourism businesses, the support measures envisaged for the sector have finally become operational. The decree provides definitive clarification on who is eligible to apply, which investments qualify for funding, and how businesses can access the incentives.

The objective is to support the upgrading and modernization of tourism-related businesses, with a particular focus on energy efficiency and innovation projects.

Who Can Benefit from the Incentives

The decree adopts a broad definition of the tourism sector. Eligible beneficiaries include not only accommodation facilities but also bars, restaurants, thermal spas, and conference centers. Travel agencies and tour operators, however, are excluded from the scheme.

To qualify for the incentives, companies must have been operating for at least three years and be fully compliant with tax and social security obligations.

Companies that do not formally operate under tourism-related ATECO codes may also apply, provided they can demonstrate through their accounting records that more than 50% of their turnover has been generated from tourism-related activities during the three years preceding the application.

Owners of properties involved in the subsidized investment project may also participate, provided they operate in the form of a business entity and rely on the eligibility requirements of the facility manager. In such cases, the manager must provide consent, and the contractual relationship between the parties must remain in place for the entire duration of the investment project.

The decree also allows companies with their registered office outside Italy to apply. Such companies must be established in accordance with the civil and commercial laws of their country of residence and be duly registered in the relevant business register. At the time of application, they must also demonstrate that they have an operational establishment in Italy, possess an Italian tax code and/or VAT number, and have fulfilled all insurance obligations required by the applicable legislation.

Eligible Investments

To access the incentives, applicants must submit an investment plan with eligible expenditures ranging from €1 million to €15 million.

Projects may include multiple business locations, provided they belong to the same company or to a network of companies.

A key requirement concerns the composition of the investment plan: at least 51% of eligible expenses must be allocated to energy efficiency measures. Examples include thermal insulation systems, photovoltaic installations, replacement of windows and doors, and the adoption of high-efficiency heating and cooling systems.

These interventions may be complemented by additional investments aimed at modernizing the business, such as process digitalization, software purchases, building renovation works, water system upgrades, and the installation of vertical gardens.

For a complete list of eligible expenses, applicants should refer to the official decree.

Funding Intensity

The level of support varies depending on the type of investment and the characteristics of the beneficiary company.

Non-repayable grants may cover up to 56% of eligible costs, with the highest funding intensity reserved for micro and small enterprises that meet the requirements established by the call.

How and When to Apply

Applications may be submitted from 12:00 PM on July 15, 2026, until 5:00 PM on September 15, 2026.

The allocation of funds will not follow a first-come, first-served “click day” procedure. Instead, applications will be assessed through a ranking system, allowing businesses to prepare their proposals carefully without the pressure of submitting them within the first few minutes of the application window opening.

Nuovo bando Molise: fino a 400.000 euro per investire nell’ospitalità turistica

La Regione Molise ha pubblicato un nuovo bando finalizzato a sostenere lo sviluppo della ricettività extra alberghiera, con l’obiettivo di rafforzare l’offerta turistica del territorio e favorire nuovi investimenti nel settore dell’accoglienza.

L’iniziativa è rivolta sia alle imprese già costituite che intendono realizzare progetti in strutture situate sul territorio regionale, sia a nuove imprese che si impegnano a costituirsi entro 45 giorni dalla concessione dell’agevolazione.

Il bando finanzia interventi destinati all’attivazione, riattivazione o ampliamento di diverse tipologie di strutture ricettive, tra cui case e appartamenti per vacanze, affittacamere, bed & breakfast, strutture del turismo rurale, campeggi, villaggi turistici, glamping e altre forme di ospitalità all’aria aperta.

Le agevolazioni prevedono contributi a fondo perduto fino al 60% delle spese ammissibili per le imprese di nuova costituzione e fino al 50% per le imprese già esistenti. Il valore massimo del progetto finanziabile è pari a 400.000 euro.

Tra le spese ammissibili rientrano l’acquisto di immobili, fino a un massimo del 50% del programma di investimento, le spese di progettazione entro il limite del 20%, gli interventi di ristrutturazione, l’acquisto di impianti, macchinari e attrezzature, nonché software gestionali e siti web funzionali all’attività ricettiva.

Le domande possono essere presentate dalle ore 12:00 del 5 giugno 2026 fino alle ore 12:00 del 5 agosto 2026.

New Molise Grant Scheme: Up to €400,000 for Tourism Hospitality Investments

The Molise Region has launched a new funding program aimed at supporting the development of non-hotel accommodation facilities, with the goal of strengthening the region’s tourism offering and encouraging new investments in the hospitality sector.

The initiative is open both to existing companies planning to carry out projects in facilities located within the Molise region and to new businesses that commit to being established within 45 days of the grant approval.

The scheme supports projects involving the establishment, reopening, or expansion of various types of accommodation facilities, including holiday homes and apartments, guest houses, bed & breakfasts, rural tourism facilities, campsites, holiday villages, glamping sites, and other forms of outdoor hospitality.

The incentives provide non-repayable grants covering up to 60% of eligible costs for newly established businesses and up to 50% for existing companies. The maximum eligible project value is €400,000.

Eligible expenses include the purchase of real estate, up to a maximum of 50% of the total investment plan, design and planning costs up to 20% of the project value, renovation works, the purchase of machinery, equipment and systems, as well as management software and websites related to the accommodation business.

Applications may be submitted from 12:00 PM on June 5, 2026, until 12:00 PM on August 5, 2026.

The real cost of buying a cheap house in Italy is not always the house. It is the years of decisions, delays, dust, paperwork, builders, surprises and family stress that rarely appear in the charming Instagram tutorial.

The same applies to the great DIY fantasy of buying and refurbishing a cheap house in a remote Italian village, preferably discovered through a romantic Instagram reel, a breathless YouTube tutorial, or a cheerful thread written by someone who has done it once and has now somehow become a planning consultant, a materials expert, a contractor’s supervisor and a spiritual guide to rural regeneration with a limewashed kitchen.

The problem is not that these stories are false. Some of them are perfectly real. A few are genuinely beautiful. Italy is full of extraordinary places, forgotten houses, astonishing landscapes, villages with more history than inhabitants and opportunities that, in the right circumstances, can still make complete sense. The problem is that these stories are almost always incomplete, because they turn one personal adventure into a general instruction manual, and they sell as a replicable lifestyle what was, in many cases, a very specific mixture of timing, luck, local help, family tolerance, hidden budget, bureaucratic patience and an almost heroic ability to live for months, or years, with dust in places where dust should never be.

This is why I have become rather suspicious of the “buy a cheap house in Italy and start again” genre, not because I do not believe in Italy, or in its villages, or in the possibility of rebuilding a life around beauty, space, community and a slower rhythm, but because I believe in all of that far too much to reduce it to a before-and-after content format. A house in Italy is not a prop. A village is not a backdrop. A renovation is not a weekend project with better lighting. And a life decision should not begin with the emotional purchase of a property that nobody else has wanted to touch for generations, simply because it looked charming in a photograph and the price appeared to be less than a used family car.

After more than 150 operations, and with five building sites currently on the go personally, you learn a few things that do not fit very well into a reel. You learn, for example, that the real cost is not always the bricks, the tiles, the windows, the plaster, the permits, the scaffolding or the builder’s invoice, although all of those have a quite impressive ability to multiply when left unsupervised. The real cost is often the physical and psychological toll of the process itself: the constant decisions, the surprises behind every wall, the permissions that take longer than expected, the materials that do not arrive, the tradesman who was absolutely certain last Tuesday and has now changed his mind because the weather, the moon, or the cousin of his supplier has apparently introduced a new technical interpretation of reality.

There is a type of exhaustion that only a building site can produce. It is not just tiredness. It is the slow erosion of certainty. You begin with an idea, then discover that the floor is not level, the roof has an opinion, the walls remember previous centuries rather too vividly, the electricity was installed by someone with great confidence and limited respect for standards, and the beautiful old feature you wanted to preserve is either structurally irrelevant, financially ruinous, or legally more complicated than adopting a small foreign monarchy. Then come the calls, the estimates, the revisions, the “small extras”, the necessary compromises, the family discussions, the seasonal delays, the local habits, the technical drawings, the municipal office, the neighbour who suddenly remembers a boundary issue, and the growing realisation that your charming Italian project has become a second job, a third child and a mild nervous condition.

And yet, this is exactly the part that tends to disappear from the fantasy. Social media is very good at showing the terracotta floor after it has been cleaned, the exposed beam after it has been treated, the view after the scaffolding has gone, the kitchen after the tiles have been chosen, and the smiling owner holding a glass of wine in the courtyard as if nothing between purchase and aperitivo had involved tears, invoices, or a WhatsApp group with seven people arguing about drainage. What it rarely shows is the month spent waiting for an answer that should have taken two days, the builder who disappears when the job becomes inconvenient, the window frames that arrive in the wrong size, the quote that made sense until it did not, or the moment when the dream of Italy begins to feel less like freedom and more like being held hostage by lime, paperwork and someone else’s calendar.

This does not mean that people should not buy old houses in Italy. Quite the opposite: some should, and some will do it beautifully. There are magnificent properties that deserve to be saved, villages where a new family can make a real difference, rural areas where the quality of life can be exceptional, and historic homes that, once restored with intelligence and respect, become not only wonderful places to live but meaningful pieces of continuity. The point is simply that the property should not come before the life. It should not be the first decision. It should be the consequence of better decisions.

Before buying the ruin, choose the life. Choose the region. Choose the rhythm. Choose the distance from an airport, a hospital, a school, a railway station, a decent supermarket, a community that still functions in February and not only in August. Choose whether you need to work remotely, whether your partner will actually enjoy being there, whether your children will be happy, whether your parents can visit, whether you can live without a large city nearby, whether the village has real services or merely an excellent sunset, whether you speak enough Italian to handle ordinary problems without turning every small appointment into a diplomatic incident. Choose the Italy that works for your habits, your family, your work, your patience and your actual life, not the Italy that looked irresistible on a Tuesday evening when the algorithm decided you were ready for exposed stone and existential reinvention.

This is where the conversation has to become more serious, and also where the real value of professional support is not simply “finding a house”. Finding houses is not the difficult part. Italy has houses. Italy has thousands of houses, in fact, some beautiful, some complicated, some overpriced, some undervalued, some technically possible, some legally absurd, and some that should come with a priest, an engineer and a therapist included in the asking price. The difficult part is understanding which house belongs to which life, which village has a future rather than just a picturesque past, which project is a sensible renovation and which is a romantic trap, which apparent bargain is actually a long-term liability, and which dream is worth pursuing because it can survive contact with budgets, contractors, planning rules, winter, family life and Monday morning.

That is why, with ITS Italy, the real value we offer to the people who work with us is not only the ability to identify properties that are ready to live in, or capable of being made genuinely suitable for those who want to live, work, invest or spend meaningful time in Italy. It is also the ability to say no. No to the wrong village. No to the wrong ruin. No to the apparently cheap project that will become expensive in every possible sense. No to the house that flatters the imagination but punishes the daily life. No to the property that looks like a dream because nobody has yet explained the practices, the permits, the structural uncertainties, the access problems, the missing services, the heating issue, the builder dependency, the renovation sequence and the very Italian art of discovering, three months later, that the thing everyone said was simple is in fact “a little more delicate”.

There is a great difference between helping someone buy property and helping someone move intelligently into a country. The first can be reduced to listings, viewings, negotiations and paperwork. The second requires a more honest conversation about place, timing, lifestyle, risk, use, budget, bureaucracy, expectations and emotional resilience. It requires asking whether the house serves the life, instead of allowing the life to be reorganised around the problems of the house. It requires understanding that a remote village can be paradise for one person and a beautifully lit prison for another, that a historic property can be a privilege or a burden, that a low purchase price can be the most expensive part of the entire decision, and that the best investment is sometimes not the building with the most romantic decay, but the one that allows a family to arrive, breathe, work, sleep, invite friends, solve problems and actually enjoy Italy before spending three years arguing about window frames.

Italy remains one of the most extraordinary places in the world to build a new chapter, whether that means a family home, a working base, a retirement plan, a hospitality project, a second residence, or a more ambitious investment in territory, lifestyle and long-term value. But Italy should not be approached as a punishment disguised as poetry. It is not necessary to suffer in order to make the dream authentic. You do not need to buy the most complicated house in the most forgotten village simply to prove that you have understood the country. Sometimes the wiser, braver and ultimately more Italian thing to do is to choose a place that works, a property that makes sense, and a project that leaves enough energy, money and humour to enjoy the life you came for.

So yes, by all means fall in love with Italy. Fall in love with its villages, its landscapes, its houses, its food, its contradictions, its impossible beauty and its deeply practical need to be understood before it is possessed. But do not start by buying someone else’s abandoned problem because the light was good in the photograph. Start with the life. Start with the family. Start with the work, the habits, the services, the seasons, the community and the version of Italy that could genuinely become yours.

The right property can come afterwards. And very often, when you begin in that order, it does.

This is a short English version of Matteo Cerri’s longer Italian analysis published on Esco quando voglio, which reads the Airbnb–TEHA/Ambrosetti report on dispersed tourism in Italy through the lens of those working with places, homes, hosts, remote workers, new residents and temporary living. The full Italian version, and the report it discusses, are linked below.

The report’s starting point is simple, but powerful: Italy does not lack appeal. Its beauty, heritage, food, landscapes and cultural assets are spread across thousands of smaller municipalities. What remains concentrated are tourist flows, infrastructure, attention and much of the economic value. In many smaller places, home-sharing is not just an alternative to hotels; sometimes it is the only practical way for visitors to stay overnight, spend locally and discover a territory outside the main circuits.

Matteo’s reading goes one step further. After travelling across Italy for ITS Italy operations and staying in almost twenty properties, he looks at the report not only as a tourism document, but as a map of what could happen next. The real question is not whether short-term rentals can fill more nights. The real question is how a stay can become a relationship with a place, how that relationship can become a return, and how that return can become a longer, better integrated presence.

This is where tourism, remote work, transitional residences and new residency overlap. Airbnb and professional short-term rental operators can open the door. Local hosts and property managers provide operational knowledge. ITS Italy can bring a different layer of demand: people who are not simply visiting, but testing a place, working from it, considering a move, or looking for a deeper connection with Italy.

The point is not to replace those who manage short-term rentals. Let them do what they know how to do. The opportunity is to work together, because places do not benefit only from occupied nights; they benefit from people who buy locally, return off season, stay longer, understand the community and may eventually invest or relocate.

For hospitality operators, property owners, destinations and anyone working on Italy’s next chapter, this is the invitation: move beyond the slogan of dispersed tourism and start building the conditions that make smaller places liveable, legible and economically connected.

Read the full Italian analysis on Esco quando voglio and the original Airbnb–TEHA report cited there.

Esco quando voglio

Quando il turismo diffuso smette di essere uno slogan, ma un segnale concreto che qualcosa sta succedendo...

Indice ragionato…

Read more

24 days ago · 3 likes · Matteo Cerri

For many Americans and Italian Americans, the idea of moving to Italy begins with a familiar image. A stone farmhouse among the vineyards of Tuscany. A colourful village suspended above the Mediterranean. A quiet piazza where life appears to move at a gentler pace than back home. Perhaps it comes from a family story, a holiday, a film, or increasingly from Instagram, where Italy often seems like an endless sequence of sunsets, pasta dishes and charming historic centres.

There is nothing wrong with that. Italy is beautiful, and much of what people fall in love with is very real. The problem begins when those images become the basis for major life decisions.

Every year, I meet people who have already decided where they want to live before they have considered what their life in Italy will actually look like. They know they want a house overlooking vineyards, but have not checked how far the nearest hospital is. They dream of a medieval village, but have not considered that the nearest railway station may be thirty kilometres away. They imagine long lunches in the sunshine, but have not spent a single February there.

My first suggestion to anyone considering a move to Italy is therefore quite simple: choose Italy based on your real life, not on your holiday memories.

The good news is that Italy offers an extraordinary range of options. Unlike smaller countries, where lifestyles tend to be relatively similar from one region to another, Italy changes dramatically as you move across the peninsula. Climate, property prices, public services, transport infrastructure, taxation, demographics and even social habits can vary enormously.

In practice, this means that there is genuinely something for almost every budget, profession and lifestyle.

One of the biggest mistakes foreigners make is assuming that Italy has a single property market. In reality, it has dozens of them.

A small apartment in central Milan can easily cost as much as a detached villa in many parts of Southern Italy. In prestigious areas of Florence, Venice, Rome or Lake Como, prices may rival those of major international cities. Meanwhile, in parts of Calabria, Molise, Basilicata, Sicily or inland Sardinia, properties can still be purchased at prices that would seem almost unimaginable in many American metropolitan areas.

The famous “one-euro house” initiatives have attracted considerable international attention, and while they are certainly real, they are often misunderstood. Nobody is giving away a fully renovated dream home overlooking the sea. These programmes usually involve properties requiring substantial investment and renovation. Yet they are also a useful reminder that Italy’s less publicised regions often offer remarkable value for those willing to look beyond the obvious destinations.

The same applies to the cost of living.

Many Americans arrive expecting Italy to be universally inexpensive. The reality is more nuanced. Milan, for example, has become one of Europe’s most expensive cities, particularly in terms of housing. Living comfortably in central Milan may cost significantly more than living in many provincial American cities.

On the other hand, a family living in a medium-sized city in Southern Italy may find that housing, utilities, dining out and everyday expenses are considerably lower than what they were accustomed to in the United States.

Even within the same region, costs can vary dramatically. A property near the Amalfi Coast and a property thirty minutes inland may have completely different price tags. The same applies around Lake Garda, Lake Como, Tuscany and many coastal destinations.

This is why the question should never be “How much does life in Italy cost?” but rather “Which Italy are we talking about?”

Transport is another factor that deserves far more attention than it usually receives.

Many Americans are surprised to discover that living in Italy without a car is entirely realistic in some areas and almost impossible in others.

If you live in Milan, Bologna, Turin, Florence or Rome, high-speed rail connections, public transport systems and walkable city centres can make daily life remarkably convenient. Italy’s high-speed rail network connects many major cities efficiently and often more comfortably than domestic air travel.

Move into rural areas, however, and the situation changes considerably. Public transport may become infrequent, services may be concentrated in larger towns, and daily life can quickly become car-dependent.

Neither option is necessarily better. Some people actively seek a slower rural lifestyle and are perfectly happy driving everywhere. Others discover after a few months that they miss the convenience of urban living far more than they expected.

The same principle applies to services.

A picturesque village with three hundred inhabitants may look wonderful in photographs, but practical questions still matter. Is there a doctor nearby? How reliable is internet connectivity? Are essential shops open year-round? How far away is the nearest airport? What happens outside the tourist season?

These questions may sound unromantic, but they often determine whether people remain in Italy happily for decades or leave after a few years.

One aspect that is frequently overlooked abroad is taxation.

For all the criticism that Italy’s tax system sometimes receives domestically, foreigners are often surprised to discover just how attractive some Italian tax regimes can be.

Successive governments have introduced a variety of measures designed to attract investment, retirees, professionals and new residents. The details evolve over time, and professional advice is always essential, but the general principle remains clear: Italy has made significant efforts to compete internationally for talent and capital.

Retirees moving to certain municipalities in Southern Italy, for example, have in recent years benefited from highly favourable flat-tax regimes on foreign income. Individuals relocating substantial wealth or business activities may find dedicated programmes designed to encourage investment. Certain internal areas suffering from population decline actively welcome newcomers. Various incentives have been created over the years to support economic development in less populated regions.

In simple terms, Italy is often much more interested in attracting new residents to Calabria than to central Milan, and much more interested in repopulating small towns than adding further pressure to Venice or Florence.

The result is a situation that occasionally causes some raised eyebrows among local residents. It is not unusual for newcomers to discover that, under certain circumstances, they may access tax arrangements that many long-term Italian taxpayers view with a degree of envy.

Naturally, these incentives should never be the sole reason for moving. Tax advantages can change, while quality of life is something you experience every day. Yet they are often an important part of the overall equation and deserve careful consideration.

Perhaps the most important point of all is that Italy is not one lifestyle.

The Italy experienced by a retired couple in a Sicilian coastal town has very little in common with the Italy of a technology entrepreneur in Milan. The daily life of a family in Bologna differs greatly from that of someone restoring a farmhouse in Umbria. A remote worker living near Lake Garda will have a completely different experience from an Italian American returning to a village in Abruzzo where their grandparents once lived.

And that is precisely the country’s greatest strength.

Too often, people arrive searching for the Italy they have seen in films. What they should be searching for is the Italy that matches their own priorities.

If your priority is international connectivity, there are cities perfectly suited to that. If your priority is affordability, there are regions where your budget may stretch much further than expected. If your priority is climate, culture, food, outdoor living, history, entrepreneurship or retirement, there are places specifically suited to each of those goals.

The real opportunity is not choosing the most famous destination. It is choosing the destination that makes sense for your life.

Because moving to Italy is not about extending a holiday indefinitely. It is about building a sustainable everyday life in one of the world’s most diverse and fascinating countries.

And for those willing to look beyond the clichés, beyond Instagram and beyond the postcards, there is indeed an Italy for almost every taste, every ambition and, perhaps most importantly, every budget.

Lo studio TEHA Group e Airbnb sull’Osservatorio sul Turismo Diffuso in Italia mostra come piccoli Comuni, borghi, aree interne e territori meno frequentati possano diventare protagonisti di un nuovo modello di ospitalità, più equilibrato, più sostenibile e più vicino all’identità del Paese.

L’Italia è uno dei Paesi più visitati al mondo, ma è anche uno dei più complessi da raccontare, perché la sua vera ricchezza non coincide soltanto con le grandi città d’arte, le destinazioni iconiche o i luoghi che da decenni occupano l’immaginario internazionale. Accanto all’Italia più conosciuta esiste infatti un’altra Italia, fatta di piccoli Comuni, borghi, paesaggi culturali, aree interne, architetture minori, musei diffusi, parchi archeologici, ristorazione di eccellenza e comunità locali che custodiscono una parte essenziale dell’identità nazionale.

È proprio da questa consapevolezza che nasce l’Osservatorio sul Turismo Diffuso in Italia, lo studio d’impatto realizzato da TEHA Group in collaborazione con Airbnb, presentato come uno strumento per comprendere se e come il turismo possa contribuire a redistribuire valore, presenze e opportunità sul territorio. Il punto di partenza è molto chiaro: nel 2024 l’Italia ha registrato 140 milioni di arrivi turistici, confermandosi tra le principali destinazioni europee, ma questi flussi restano fortemente concentrati in poche aree. Il primo 20% dei Comuni italiani intercetta oltre il 90% degli arrivi, mentre appena 20 Comuni attraggono da soli circa un terzo dei turisti del Paese.

Questa concentrazione produce una doppia fragilità. Da una parte aumenta la pressione sulle destinazioni più frequentate, dove il tema dell’overtourism non riguarda soltanto la quantità di visitatori, ma anche il rapporto tra turismo, abitabilità, servizi, paesaggio urbano e qualità della vita. Dall’altra lascia ai margini territori che possiedono un patrimonio straordinario, ma che spesso non dispongono di infrastrutture, visibilità o offerta ricettiva sufficiente per entrare stabilmente nei circuiti turistici nazionali e internazionali.

I piccoli Comuni, quelli con meno di 30.000 abitanti, rappresentano oltre il 96% delle municipalità italiane e ospitano più della metà della popolazione del Paese. Sono luoghi spesso fragili dal punto di vista demografico ed economico, ma al tempo stesso custodiscono una quota decisiva del patrimonio italiano: il 64% dei musei e delle gallerie d’arte, il 67% dei parchi e delle aree archeologiche, il 62% dei monumenti e dei complessi monumentali, il 75% dei ristoranti stellati Michelin e l’80% dei Comuni legati ai siti italiani iscritti nella lista UNESCO.

Il turismo diffuso, in questo senso, non può essere interpretato soltanto come una risposta ai problemi delle città sovraffollate. È piuttosto una strategia culturale e territoriale, capace di riportare attenzione su luoghi che non hanno bisogno di essere inventati, ma di essere resi accessibili, leggibili e vivibili. Perché un borgo, una valle, un centro storico minore o un paesaggio agricolo non diventano destinazioni solo perché esistono: servono ospitalità di qualità, cura dello spazio pubblico, servizi, connessioni, narrazione, manutenzione del patrimonio e una relazione autentica con le comunità che quei luoghi li abitano tutto l’anno.

In questo scenario, lo studio analizza anche il ruolo dell’ospitalità alternativa. Nei Comuni con meno di 5.000 abitanti gli alloggi disponibili su Airbnb sono cresciuti del 221% tra il 2019 e il 2025, rendendo fruibili territori dove spesso non esisteva un’offerta ricettiva tradizionale. Oggi la piattaforma è presente in circa il 75% dei piccoli Comuni italiani e, nel 31% di essi, rappresenta l’unica forma di ricettività disponibile. Secondo l’analisi, i turisti ospitati tramite Airbnb nei piccoli Comuni hanno generato nel 2025 un impatto economico stimato in circa 836 milioni di euro, con effetti anche su occupazione, reddito, accessibilità culturale e tenuta del valore immobiliare.

Il dato più interessante, però, non è soltanto economico. La vera questione riguarda il modo in cui l’Italia può progettare un modello di turismo più distribuito senza trasformare ogni luogo in una replica delle destinazioni già sovraffollate. Il turismo diffuso funziona quando produce valore senza consumare identità, quando sostiene le comunità senza sostituirle, quando recupera patrimonio senza ridurlo a scenografia, quando porta visitatori ma anche nuova attenzione verso servizi, lavoro, manutenzione e qualità della vita.

Per ITS Journal, questo tema parla direttamente al futuro dell’hospitality, del design e del placemaking in Italia. Non si tratta solo di aumentare i posti letto, ma di costruire ecosistemi territoriali in cui architettura, accoglienza, cultura, impresa locale e comunità possano lavorare insieme. L’Italia meno visibile non è una riserva da sfruttare, ma un patrimonio da comprendere e valorizzare con intelligenza. Il turismo diffuso può essere una grande opportunità, purché venga accompagnato da una visione: non portare semplicemente più persone nei luoghi, ma creare le condizioni perché quei luoghi restino vivi, abitati, curati e riconoscibili.

‘Distributed Tourism’ in Italy: Discovering the Country Beyond the Usual Routes

A new impact study by TEHA Group and Airbnb explores how Italy’s small municipalities, historic villages and lesser-known territories could become central to a more balanced, sustainable and culturally rooted model of hospitality.

Italy is one of the most visited countries in the world, but it is also one of the most difficult to understand through numbers alone. Its appeal is not limited to the major art cities, the iconic coastlines or the destinations that have dominated the international imagination for decades. Beyond the familiar routes lies another Italy: small municipalities, historic villages, cultural landscapes, inland areas, local museums, archaeological parks, architectural heritage, Michelin-starred restaurants and communities that preserve a fundamental part of the country’s identity.

This is the starting point of the Osservatorio sul Turismo Diffuso in Italia, the impact study developed by TEHA Group in collaboration with Airbnb, which looks at whether a more distributed model of tourism can help rebalance flows and generate measurable value across the country. The premise is clear. In 2024 Italy recorded 140 million tourist arrivals, confirming its position among Europe’s leading destinations. Yet those flows remain heavily concentrated in a limited number of places. The top 20% of Italian municipalities capture more than 90% of national tourist arrivals, while just 20 municipalities attract around one third of all tourists visiting the country.

This imbalance creates two different forms of pressure. On the one hand, it intensifies overtourism in the most visited destinations, where the issue is no longer only the number of visitors, but the relationship between tourism, liveability, infrastructure, housing, services and urban quality of life. On the other hand, it excludes a vast part of the country from the economic benefits of tourism, even when those territories hold exceptional cultural, natural and gastronomic assets.

Small municipalities, defined in the study as those with fewer than 30,000 inhabitants, represent more than 96% of all Italian municipalities and are home to over half of the national population. Many of them face demographic decline, lower incomes and a progressive loss of real estate value. At the same time, they host 64% of Italy’s museums and art galleries, 67% of its parks and archaeological areas, 62% of its monuments and monumental complexes, 75% of its Michelin-starred restaurants and 80% of the municipalities connected to Italian UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Distributed tourism, therefore, should not be seen simply as a way to relieve pressure from overcrowded destinations. It is a cultural and territorial strategy. It can bring renewed attention to places that do not need to be invented, but need to be made accessible, legible and liveable. A village, a valley, a minor historic centre or a rural landscape do not become destinations simply because they exist. They require quality hospitality, public space, services, connectivity, storytelling, heritage maintenance and a meaningful relationship with the communities that inhabit them throughout the year.

Within this context, the study also examines the role of alternative hospitality. In Italian municipalities with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, Airbnb listings grew by 221% between 2019 and 2025, helping to open up territories where traditional accommodation is often limited or absent. Today, Airbnb is present in around 75% of Italy’s small municipalities and represents the only available form of accommodation in 31% of them. According to the analysis, guests staying in Airbnb accommodation in small municipalities generated an estimated economic impact of approximately €836 million in 2025, with further effects on employment, household income, cultural accessibility and the preservation of residential property value.

The most important point, however, is not only economic. The real question is how Italy can build a more distributed tourism model without turning every place into a smaller version of already overcrowded destinations. Distributed tourism works when it generates value without consuming identity, when it supports communities without replacing them, when it restores heritage without reducing it to a backdrop, and when it brings visitors while also creating new attention around services, work, maintenance and quality of life.

For ITS Journal, this debate is directly connected to the future of hospitality, design and placemaking in Italy. The challenge is not merely to increase the number of beds available across the country, but to build territorial ecosystems in which architecture, hospitality, culture, local enterprise and communities can work together. Italy’s lesser-known territories are not empty spaces waiting to be exploited. They are living places, with their own histories, balances and identities. Distributed tourism can become a major opportunity, but only if it is guided by a clear vision: not simply bringing more people to more places, but creating the conditions for those places to remain alive, inhabited, cared for and recognisable.