(Conde Nast Traveler) The idea of packing up and moving to Italy to live out your own Eat, Pray, Love seems like fiction for anyone not named Elizabeth Gilbert. But if one tiny Italian town has its way, you’ll be moving there soon—and you’ll even get paid $2,100 for your troubles.
The village of Bormida, in northwestern Italy, is launching a program that offers €2,000 ($2,100) to anyone willing to move there to stave off the town’s shrinking population. Idyllic in the most Italian Alpine way, Bormida had only 390 residents when Mayor Daniele Galliano took office in 2014, as Il Secolo XIX notes. Since then, 54 residents have either passed away or moved to other places, with only four births to counteract the losses. To combat that downsizing, Galliano began renting out municipal houses for $50 a month for small homes, and up to $130 for larger homes to attract people to move to his small town. And the move worked.
