«1 euro house» by Airbnb: the French family has arrived in Sambuca and will stay for a year

They are all there, there is the mayor, the deputy mayor, the priest, the citizens, the neighbors, the tourists. Who plays and who prepares food. Sambuca – 6000 inhabitants in the province of Agrigento – is waiting for the French family who will live in the village for a year thanks to Airbnb’s “Casa a 1 euro” project. There are 5 of them, Eva and Mathieuparents of Iba, Jeanne and Pierre (the last of which is 4 years old) have never seen Sambuca, have looked at some pictures and photos of the house, and are arriving after a 4 day trip: from Bordeaux to Barcelona by car, then by ferry to Genoa, another ferry to Palermo and a car to Sambuca. With crazy heat. But when they arrive the emotion is great, people applaud, the journalists take them back, the mayor Leonardo Ciacco arrives with the sash to welcome him, while Giacomo Trovat, the country manager of Airbnb Italy, leads him through the people to get to the front door. A moving moment, as the spontaneous offer of a community always moves, true smiles, things done together.

Sambuca Style

The French family was chosen from among the 100 thousand requests that came to Airbnb at the news of the competition: what was it about? Airbnb would have dealt with the renovation of a house owned by the municipality (incidentally, it spent 130 thousand euros) and would have made it available for free to those who wanted to live there for a year. The only request – suggested – is to become a host and possibly make a room in the house available to the platform. For the rest, it was just a matter of starting a unique experience in a small Sicilian town overlooking the Belice valley and overlooking the sea. A magical place with a thousand-year history, which was a Punic settlement (on nearby Monte Adranone), then Greek, which was a Saracen city with the name of Zabutlater transformed into a more local «Sambuca».

A country that experienced the importance of being on a strategic communication route and which then, following the history of Italy, experienced depopulation, to which it responds today with its beauty and pride, and also with “one-euro houses” project, the idea of ​​the local administration to put up for sale at the price of 1 euro on abandoned houses owned by the municipality. THEThe success – Mayor Leonardo Ciacco told us – was enormous: mail arrived in Sambuca from all over the world and also people, 35 houses were sold and restored, and even if some are in the hands of Chinese or Singaporeans who will hardly live here all year round, the project has brought notoriety to the country and investments . Sambuca, very Sicilian, has become cosmopolitan.

But what will the French do?

But let’s go back to the French family: while – very tired but always with a smile – they give interviews upstairs in their new home, downstairs all the partygoers are commenting on the spaces and the design, and a group of ladies have took possession of the sofa, suggesting that the French family will not feel alone in Sambuca.

The next day, we go with them to have breakfast at Pasini dairy, one of the five in this area devoted to sheep farming and viticulture (with companies that have made the history of Sicilian wines, from Planeta to Donna Fugata). The dairy is a simple place, with the laboratory inside and in the courtyard a large table where Alessia and her mother serve a parade of exceptional cheeses, all made from sheep: tume, primo sale, aged pecorino, vastedda, a local specialty made of spun curd, a kind of mozzarella with sheep’s milk. And – to highlight – a freshly made sheep’s milk ricotta with morning milk, watery, warm, which is the best ricotta that this writer has ever tried or will ever try. Their 500 sheep graze outdoors on organic fields, the work is hard, has no timetables, but the difference with industrial products is abysmal, and must be celebrated (so write down the number, tel. 0925 943493).