Down in the old town of Mussomeli, the party is just getting started. Around 6,000 people are crammed into the narrow streets around the Madonna dei Miracoli church, bodies pressed against bodies, waiting for the show to begin. The streets are ablaze as if it’s Christmas: arches lit in neon blue, white, green and flashes of red. The Baroque façade — cream stone, with a double layer of columns — is lit up, “W MARIA” (“Long live Mary”) in a holy blue hue over the door.
Then, out she comes: a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, covered almost entirely in precious golden jewelry donated by the townspeople. At nearly six feet high and on a platform made of thick wood, it takes 20-odd men to carry her. But carry her they do, down the steps of the church, up the steep street to the town center, and then in a procession up, down and around this cliff-edge town for around two hours, with a band playing, fireworks going off intermittently, and thousands following them every step of the way.
Welcome to life in a one euro home town: fiercely local, fiercely traditional and with a fearsome sense of community — one people from all over the world are now becoming part of. Mussomeli, in central Sicily, is perhaps the best known of the towns around Italy selling off ruined homes for just one euro, or about $1.20. Those are, of course, in need of a complete rebuild, but the project also includes “premium” homes, which need fewer interventions, and are often fully inhabitable, starting from around $12,000. The town council put an initial batch of houses up for sale in 2017, and since then, around 450 have been sold, including 150 one euro homes, according to Cinzia Sorce of Agenzia Immobiliare Siciliana, the real-estate agency that launched the project.
When most people hear about houses selling for one euro, the reaction is usually either intrigue or dismissal. How can a house cost less than a cup of coffee? Just how bad is it? And does anyone actually live in the town, or is it a semi-abandoned mountain village, hours away from civilization? There must be a catch — right?
In the case of Mussomeli — perhaps one reason it’s so popular — the answer is that there is still a lot going on in this town of around 5,000 residents. Although there aren’t chain stores, there are high-street shops. There are doctors, veterinary surgeons, mechanics, supermarkets and sports facilities. There’s a hospital, and a private medical clinic, too. There are restaurants, pizzerias, cafés and bars. And there are regular events, from the live music that takes over the town’s piazzas most nights in summer to the myriad Catholic processions, the biggest of which is September 8, the day of “La Madonna di Mussomeli.” It’s clear this is no dying town.
“My expectation was that Mussomeli was an abandoned town where nothing was happening, and I was surprised that I was wrong,” says German Barbara Maerkl, who moved here in 2024, buying a “premium” house that she is currently renovating. “The town is very vibrant in summer, there are events almost every day. Religious festivals, music festivals, dancing, live bands. That was a big surprise.”
Those who live in Mussomeli have no regrets.
“I lived in Turin briefly for work, but wanted to have a family down south, so when I was choosing between the city and the countryside, I chose the countryside,” says Sorce. Happily back in her hometown with her husband and kids, she scoffs at the idea that she could live anywhere else. “I don’t get stuck in traffic. I go home during my lunch break. Without driving, we have pubs, a cinema, pizzerias, restaurants. In winter I go for a walk at 11 p.m. I wouldn’t be able to do that in a city.”
Even her children like it. “If I ask my 19-year-old daughter, ‘Shall we move to Palermo?’ she wouldn’t want to. She likes the tranquility of Mussomeli.”
Making new friends
While the image of Italy in the global imagination is one of dramatic coastlines and ancient cities stacked full of artistic masterpieces, those who choose Mussomeli are after something different.
Speak to foreigners who either live in Mussomeli or have bought homes in the town, and they all focus on the warmth and welcome from the locals.
“It’s the people who make me feel very comfortable and very welcome — that’s why I chose to stick around,” says Maerkl.
“People were very welcoming and open,” says Tahira Khan, from Singapore, who arrived in December 2024. “It’s a small town, so it’s easy to get to know you. It’s very different from the city.”
For the Mussomelesi, “accoglienza,” or welcoming outsiders, is a part of life.
Take Maria Anna Valenza, for example. Last year, alongside her brother Michele and sister-in-law Monia, she opened Manfredomus, a plush bed and breakfast overlooking the Castello Manfredonico, the 14th-century castle embedded into a rocky bluff that dominates the Mussomeli landscape. The B&B has swiftly attained near-perfect ratings from guests on review sites, not just for the comfortable rooms and stylish furniture (made by her husband, Michele) but also for the family’s warmth — any time there’s a festival or event in town, you can be sure that Valenza will be there with her guests.
For the guests, it’s a taste of real southern Italian hospitality. Valenza says she gains from it too. “I like meeting foreigners because their worlds are so different from ours,” she says. “They tell us different things, they have different lives, so you always learn from them. I always ask them if they want to come out with us. I think it’s nice to show them things that they don’t have in their own countries.”
For those who know northern Italy better, there’s a noticeable difference. That easy openness that people associate with Italy is, actually, more of a southern thing.
“In reality, all Sicily has open and welcoming people, because we lived through foreign rule,” says Mussomeli’s mayor, Giuseppe Catania. “It’s in our DNA to adapt and be open to new populations.” A few decades ago this inland part of Sicily was more insular, he says, but that’s no longer the case. Partly because of technology bringing the outside in; partly because today’s young people travel. But also because of the one-euro homes project:
“I always say that as well as the tangible benefits, cultural exchange is equally important. It’s opened up the town and has definitely had an important effect.”
For Khan, Sicily’s past as a “melting pot of multiple cultures” was particularly attractive when she was deciding where to come.
Rural Sicily is perhaps surprisingly progressive. In 2013, judges in Trapani became the first in Italy to rule that a transwoman qualified for a female passport without undergoing gender reassignment surgery. Judges in Caltanissetta, near Mussomeli, made a similar ruling four years later.
Sorce puts Sicilian openmindedness down to the waves of emigration, as islanders left for a better life elsewhere.
“Mussomeli was always lived in by people who came and went,” she says. “Lots of people left to work abroad. Some were able to return; others, their children or grandchildren did. Having people with outside origins was always seen as a good thing here. There was always immigration and emigration.” Mayor Catania hit the headlines recently when he arranged for doctors from Argentina to immigrate to Mussomeli to staff the rural hospital. There’s now a thriving Argentinian community in town. More importantly, the hospital is also thriving.
‘Like a nativity scene’
The landscape is another pull for foreigners. Although most outsiders associate Sicily with its spectacular coastline, the entroterra, or inland Sicily, is equally spectacular. The landscape around Mussomeli — high-spurred, rolling hills that unspool for miles — is out of this world.
“When you come up into Mussomeli and see the centro storico, you’re fascinated,” says Sorce, referring to the town’s historic center. “There are lots of little houses suspended in the air on the rock. It’s like a nativity scene, or like going to Greece and seeing all white and blue houses on the mountains. People come for the beauty of the town, and the peacefulness.”
Khan reckons that, “Some bits look like Canada, others are true Mediterranean.”
Little wonder that the most popular houses for foreigners are those in the highest part of town, overlooking the view.
There’s plenty to do in the area, too. On the other side of the valley, wrapped around another rocky spur, is another pretty town, Sutera. An hour east, across rolling hills that could be in Tuscany, is Caltanissetta, the provincial capital — it’s best known as the birthplace of the cannolo pastry, and home to some of Europe’s most special Easter Week celebrations.
Beyond Caltanissetta, and 90 minutes from Mussomeli, is Piazza Armerina, a breathtaking Baroque town. On its outskirts is the Villa Romana del Casale, an ancient Roman country estate, whose floors are covered in mosaics — including one infamous one of female athletes in bikinis — described by UNESCO as “the finest mosaics in situ anywhere in the Roman world.”
An hour south of Mussomeli is Agrigento, whose Valley of the Temples is an ancient Greek settlement, where temples still stand between almond trees which bloom pink each spring. Nearby is the birthplace of Nobel Prize-winning author Luigi Pirandello, which is now a museum. His theories on humanity’s desire to wear masks are joltingly prescient for the social media age.
Ninety minutes northwest is Palermo — and en route, at Cefalà Diana, are Arab-Norman baths into which thermal water still flows. Catania is about two hours east, with Etna, Taormina and Syracuse beyond it.
As for that all-important coast, the nearest beach is just 40 minutes’ drive, while the social media-famous Scala dei Turchi is just over an hour from Mussomeli.
Big change for one euro
The one euro home project has had a huge impact on the town, says Catania, who took office in 2015 and inherited an old town that was emptying out, and a declining population. The town — which had nearly 18,000 residents at its largest — saw waves of postwar emigration, with families leaving for the UK and US (the Madonna di Mussomeli festival is celebrated in Buffalo, NY each year). The centro storico, which spills down the hillside, may be beautiful, but with steep, narrow streets that can barely fit a Madonna through them, it wasn’t the most practical of places to live. So as apartment blocks went up in a flatter area above town from the late 1970s, families moved up to the “new town,” leaving the centro storico to empty out.
Catania was elected to a deserted town core. “We found ourselves in front of a centro storico that need to be requalified and repopulated,” he says. They also wanted to bring a touch of “internationality” to the inland area. After evaluating various plans, they decided the one euro project would work best: restoring the crumbling homes in the centro storico, rejuvenating the parts of town where locals no longer wanted to live, and combating those falling demographics. Eight years on, it seems to be working: with 18 nationalities now living permanently in the town, Catania says that in 2023, the number of residents matched the population of 10 years earlier for the first time in two decades.
The project has also boosted the local economy. Builders are rushed off their feet — buyers must now join waiting lists for the best ones — and new lodgings and restaurants have opened up on the back of the project. Mussomeli is now on the radar for tourism, too. Catania says that the number of tourists registered annually rose by 919% from 2016 to 2024. As they leave glowing reviews for places like Manfredomus, more people arrive in their place.
Sorce says that the one-euro project is “the loveliest thing we’ve had. It’s changed the mentality, opened minds, knocked down prejudices.”
So far, they’re not convinced that there are downsides. Initially people worried about the kind of people who might arrive, says Catania, but so far all the foreigners have embraced the lifestyle and traditions. “Every few weeks there’s another saint being celebrated, and processions going through the town,” says Maerkl. “It’s really beautiful to experience that. Also, people celebrate here without getting drunk. They drink to celebrate life, not forget it.”
Catania, who has also lived in Rome and Bologna, wouldn’t swap Mussomeli for anywhere.
“Even when I worked for 20 years in Agrigento (one hour away) I preferred to come home every day,” he says. “I returned because I was crazy in love with Mussomeli.”
It seems he’s not the only one.