Villa For Sale: Two Bucks

An earthquake devastated the Sicilian village of Salemi in 1968, killing 200 people and reducing thousands of buildings to rubble. Down the hill, a faceless modern city sprung up in the village's place, but the historical center has been a ghost town ever since. Except for a few dozen habitable villas, the ruins are frozen in time: tattered curtains hang on broken windows and rusty table legs protrude from heaps of rubble.

Now Salemi is taking an unusual step to reincarnate the old town: it is giving the dilapidated villas away. The city's new celebrity mayor, Vittorio Sgarbi, a former national deputy culture minister and an avid art critic and colorful television personality, is offering 3,000 of the villas for the bargain-basement price of €1 (about U.S.$1.41 at current exchange rates) a piece. The catch? The new owners have two years to renovate, staying true to each building's original characteristics and, when possible, using the area's local artisans, masons and builders.

The idea, conceived with the help of advertising guru Oliviero Toscani, is to attract foreign investors interested in a remote Sicilian escape for vacations or businesses. (Italians have already passed on previous similar offers.) The authorities hope the plan will turn Salemi into a boomtown, employing hundreds of out-of-work locals in construction and renovation projects. "These houses are like a heart pierced by a thorn," says Toscani, who is best known for his controversial advertisement photography using human hearts and anorexic fashion models. "They are dangerous, but they also represent a patrimony that is slowly dissolving away."

So far, agents involved in the sale say there's been plenty of interest. David Moss, who runs MIPC, a bilingual Italian property consultancy with offices in London and Italy, is working with Sgarbi and the Salemi city council to help non-Italian speakers work through the finer points of applying for the free houses. In the week since Salemi's housing closeout was announced, Moss says he has received nearly 2,000 inquiries from interested buyers--including artists, philanthropists and even a television producer who envisions a DIY series built around renovating these dilapidated structures. He is so inundated with requests that he plans to offer a free downloadable letter-of-intent to his Web site for those who want to go directly to the Salemi city council.
 
Whoever signs on must be willing to pay $100,000 or so in renovation costs to bring the villas up to snuff. Experts estimate the basic renovation cost at between €900-€1,200 per square meter, based on local market prices for labor and materials without any extras. That hasn't deterred Michel Delran and Francois Teyssier, French natives who live in the United Kingdom. They hope to buy one of the villas to create a 100 to 200-seat performing arts theater where visiting artists could show their work. They plan to apply for a European Commission grant for the project, which would be a notable boost for this oft-forgotten part of Italy's troubled south. "When I discovered this project, I was thrilled. The concept is brilliant," Delran told NEWSWEEK. "Of course there are risks involved, but this is an opportunity and I hope it attracts like-minded developers."

The concept is inarguably one that would be beneficial to Sicily's stagnant economy on many levels. Increased revenue from taxes would boost infrastructure and there seems little question that unemployment, which hovers around 30 percent in this part of Italy, would decrease substantially as artisans are put to work on the renovations.

What about the Mafia? After all, Salemi is just a stone's throw from Corleone where Mafia don Bernardo Provenzano was captured in 2006. The project's leaders hope that successful anti-Mafia efforts, which in recent years have led to the arrest of hundreds of top-level members of the Cosa Nostra, will reassure buyers. Delran, for one, doesn't seem bothered by the possibility of corruption. "We can't ignore the Mafia," he says, "But by raising the interest in this project Sgarbi has given it visibility that should act as a deterrent. Corruption may be there, but with everyone watching, they may think twice."