Photo: Giambattista Lazazzera/Shutterstock

This Italian Village Is Giving Away Free One-Week Vacations

Italy News
by Eben Diskin Jun 30, 2020

Small Italian villages have apparently moved on from the trend of selling $1 homes, and are now embracing free vacation giveaways instead.

Now that international travel has resumed, the village of San Giovanni in the region of Molise is encouraging tourism by offering free trips as part of the “Give Yourself Molise” program. The initiative originally started last year, but has been rebooted by the town’s culture organization Amici del Morrutto just in time for post-pandemic travel.

Local activist Enzo Luogo, who’s behind the campaign, told The Telegraph last year, “Due to decades of emigration from Molise, there are houses in village centers that have been lying empty for years. These are beautiful but depopulated villages that don’t have any tourist accommodation to begin with, so we thought: how can we help revive our historic villages, while also encouraging visitors during these difficult times when tourism is at an all-time low?”

You can fill out an application online for a chance to win a free trip to San Giovanni. Forty winners will be chosen to spend a week for free in local homes. The only criteria to enter is that you can’t be a current resident of the Molise region, and should be able to explain why you want to visit the area.

Be aware that the application is in Italian, so you may need to rely on a translation tool to fill it out.

Discover Matador