After tourism in Salmi, Sicily, was severely damaged, the municipality offered to buy the buildings at a ridiculous price - in exchange for renovating them themselves.
Aerial photo of the city of Salmi in Italy
Photography:
Francesco Russo
The Corona plague has led to restrictions on flights around the world and huge damage to the tourism industry, but in a small town in Italy there seem to be some people with particularly original ideas designed to bring in tourists who have not yet arrived.
What did Salmi Council, a small town in the west of the island of Sicily, decide to do?
Offering for sale a few dozen old and dilapidated buildings with a ridiculous initial cost of just one euro - in exchange for their new owners renovating them themselves.
Domenico and Notti, the mayor of Salmi, hope the gimmick will bring breathing air to tourism in the city, which some 4,000 residents left after a severe earthquake struck the area in 1968. "Before launching the plan, we had to rehabilitate the areas of those buildings and upgrade the infrastructure in them , "Said Vanotti.
"Now the city is ready for the next stage."
Salmi is not the first city in Italy, where nearly 40,000 people have died from the corona virus, which advertises itself through the idea of selling old buildings for one euro.
"It was a long process. Not only did we bear the burden of upgrading the infrastructure to ensure the safety of these buildings, we also had to rehabilitate them to suit the new tenants who would purchase them."