Free to good owner - Sicily town gives away homes

Gangi, Sicily

LOOKING for a home? One Sicilian town is making an offer that is hard to refuse: It is giving away houses.

There is a catch, naturally. The properties in Gangi, a picturesque central town that straddles the Madonie Mountains, are generally dilapidated, some abandoned generations ago.

The structures give new meaning to the term "fixer-upper", and anyone who acquires one of the properties has just four years to restore it and make it livable.

But the offer has already lured dozens of holiday home hunters from around the world, and Gangi's novel approach to revival has brought fresh opportunities to local builders and tradesmen while energising tourism.

"For our Sicilian mentality, Gangi was considered to be too far from the sea" to be attractive for tourism, said Giuseppe Ferrarello, the mayor of the town, which lies on a windy, stomach-rattling r…