Towns across Italy have been racing to launch clever schemes aimed at luring new residents to revive their fortunes in recent years.

From dilapidated homes selling for little more than a dollar, to ready-to-occupy houses at knockdown prices, there's been a frenzy of competition.

The picturesque town of Presicce in the sunny region of Puglia is the latest to enter the game with a tantalizing offer. Officials say they will pay people up to 30,000 euros (roughly $30,000) to buy an empty dwelling and take up residency.

Authorities in Presicce hope the offer of a cash incentive will breathe new life into their depopulating town, where newborns are fewer each year.

"There are many empty homes in the historical center built before 1991 which we would like to see alive again with new residents," local councilor Alfredo Palese tells CNN. "It is a pity witnessing how our old districts full of history, wonderful architecture and art are slowly emptying."

Presicce traces its history to the middle ages, when settlements spread out around a Saracen fortress built by monks who dug crypts and underground olive mills as shelters for pirate raid survivors.

It gained a reputation as Puglia's "city of green gold" for lush olive groves that yield premium extra virgin olive oil, flourishing during the Renaissance as a prosperous fiefdom also known for its fine wine, cheeses and cattle trade.

Many locals lived underground, digging caves into Presicce's rocky terrain.

Beneath the main piazzas and lavish Baroque palazzos lies a network of 23 secret chambers and olive mills in which farmers, known as trappettari, spent months during harvest season, pressing olives in stone mills pushed by donkeys.

Many historical buildings have private access to underground chambers where massive mills still stand. Guided tours through the subterranean city are a tourist highlight.

In the ancient district, wide elegant streets are crisscrossed by winding narrow alleys. Stately decorated gold-colored buildings with wrought-iron balconies and inner courtyards mingle with simple white dwellings.

Presicce's countryside offers the best of rural Puglia with ancient solitary dome-shaped stone chapels, byzantine crypts, olive groves with massive twisted tree trunks, purplish dry stone walls and fortified masserie rural farms where peasant families once lived under the protection of powerful lords to escape pirate attacks.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/amp/presicce-italy-pay-to-move/index.html

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/amp/presicce-italy-pay-to-move/index.html

By the time Nigerians flood the place....they will begin to ban us up and down....


For those people that wants to japa.....See opportunity here....japa and collect your share of the cake...

Been posted before.