JAKARTA - Cities across Italy have been racing to launch a smart scheme, to lure new residents to revive their wealth in recent years.
From dilapidated houses that are sold for a little more than one dollar, to ready-to-live houses at low prices, there is a bustle competition.
The beautiful City of Presicce in the bright Puglia region, is the latest to enter a 'game' with lucrative offers.
Officials said they would pay people up to 30,000 euros (IDR 489,679,375) to buy empty and permanent residences.
Better yet, the houses to be sold as part of the deal are priced at around 25,000 euros. Like other cheap properties sold across Italy, they have long been abandoned by their original owners.
And as an additional bonus, the location is extraordinary, surrounded by natural Salento areas, close to smooth sandy beaches and clear Santa Maria waters in Leuca are blue greenish.
Authorities at Presicce hope that the cash incentive offer will provide a new life in their quiet city, where the number of newborns is less every year.
"There are many empty houses in the historical center that were built before 1991 that we would like to see alive again with new residents," local council member Alfredo Palese told CNN, as reported November 18.
"It's a shame to witness how our old historical, beautiful architecture and art districts are slowly empty."
Details of the deal are currently being finalized, added Palese, but authorities are ready to launch the app in the coming weeks, when information will be available on the city hall website.
"We will offer up to 30,000 euros to people who are willing to move here and buy one of these abandoned residences," he said. "The total fund will be divided. Part of it will be used to buy old houses, and partly to reorganize, if needed," he said.
Palese said the 2019 merger with adjacent communities to create a larger Presicce-Acquarica city, had passed it on with extra money to ensure the project could continue for years to come.
"After the merger, according to Italian law, our wider territory will be blessed with more public funding, roughly 1,000,000 euros per year over the next few years, which we want to invest in revitalizing the old district," said Palese.
Together, Presicce and Acquarica now have about 9,000 inhabitants, but only half of the population lives in the older part of the community.
City Hall has launched another scheme to lure more residents, including tax allowances to set up new business activities and baby bonuses for families with children.
To qualify for the 30,000 euro incentive, buyers must stay at Presicce and purchase one of the selected properties built before 1991, which has been mapped by the authorities.
According to Palese, the price of the house starts at 500 euros per square meter. About 25,000 euros should be enough to secure 50 square meters of housing that requires some repairs.
Presicce traces its history into the Middle Ages, when settlements spread around the Saracen strongholds built by monks digging basements, and underground olive factories as shelters for survivors of pirate attacks.
It gains a reputation as Puglia's "green gold city" for fertile plantations that produce premium extra virgin olive oil, growing during Renaissance as a prosperous territory, also known for its quality trade in wine, cheese and livestock.
Many local residents live underground, digging caves on the Presicce rocky terrain.
Di bawah piazza utama dan palazzo Baroque yang mewah terdapat jaringan 23 ruang rahasia dan pabrik tengah tempat para petani, yang dikenal sebagai trappettari, menghabiskan waktu berbulan-bulan selama musim panen, menekan buah yol di pabrik batu yang didorong oleh lung.
Many historic buildings have private access to the basement where large factories are still standing. The guided tour through the underground city is a tourist attraction.
In ancient districts, graceful wide streets were crossed by narrow alleys that rolled around. The gold buildings are decorated majestically with an iron balcony and a yard in mingling with a simple white residence.
There are presco palazzos, chapels, and nazar columns built by a rich rural plaguation of reddish white stone. There is also a vetchi curti (old page) is a typical residence located in two beautiful neighborhoods in an old center called Corciuli and Padreterno with private gardens, underground factories, orange trees and exotic plants.
The Presicce village offers the best from rural Puglia, with ancient stone chapels shaped as solitary domes, Byzantine basements, olive gardens with large twisted tree trunks, purplish dry stone walls, and rural farming where farmers' families have lived under the protection of powerful rulers to escape pirate attacks.
There are also trekking and cycling routes relaxing through views of rural soil decorated with sheep grazing fields and abandoned stone forts.
Meanwhile, Salento's pure coastline, which extends between the locations of the seafronts ofilipoli and Santa Maria in Leuca, is very close.
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