Mayors of the tiny towns across Italy that sell houses for just one euro ($1.06) say that the initiative has worked to repopulate the country's abandoned medieval villages. The scheme started 12 years ago in the Sicilian mountaintop village of Gangi. Alessandro Cilibrasi sells several of the village's dilapidated houses and says that, while buyers might need a lot of imagination to see the potential, it's a great opportunity.

"Being a medieval village, the houses weren't developed on one level but on multiple, so usually the ground floor was where the animals were kept and then upstairs there is the bedroom and the last floor the kitchen," Cilibrasi told CGTN.