A Sleeping Beauty Rises in Rural Italy

In this country of gorgeous, picturesque villages, it takes moxie to call yourself the fairest one of all.

Yet that’s exactly what a handful of small towns are doing, part of a national campaign to rescue rural Italy from extinction.

With their medieval fortresses, Gothic churches and cobblestone roads, many of these villages representing the quintessential Italy argue that they will die out if they fail to attract new business and visitors.

Montefiore Conca, sitting on a hill thick with oak and chestnut trees near the northern Adriatic coast, is one of the first batches of towns to be named the prettiest among those with populations of less than 2,000. The list was drawn up by the nonprofit National Assn. of Italian Municipalities, which took applications and then sent a team to visit and judge the contestants. Criteria include historical significance, physical beauty, cleanliness and quality of life.

Eight hamlets, including Montefiore, were named in 2002, the first year of the list; now there are 108.

The idea was to give a boost to places in the so-called Smaller Italy, the lesser-known parts of the country. Separately, the national government will soon allot millions of dollars to some of these and other villages judged by inspectors to be charming but in need.

Montefiore’s civic boosters relish their status. Armed with sleek brochures and a website, they know a good marketing gimmick when they see it. “A village, a dream,” the brochure purrs, with a picture of the town’s dominating fortress under a glowing full moon.

“Look around,” said Deputy Mayor Pietro Cipriani, seated outside one of Montefiore’s two restaurants on the main (and only) town square. “No smog. Little traffic.... You can appreciate the silence.”

On this particular evening, silence was giving way to Van Morrison blaring from someone’s stereo speakers. Montefiore was having one of the arts festivals it stages annually inside the walls of its landmark 14th-century fortress.

Under a glorious full moon, hundreds of visitors were strolling through the stone arches of the citadel, known as La Rocca, past ancient houses toward a majestic watchtower that once stood vigil over the medieval Malatesta dynasty immortalized by poet Ezra Pound. Mimes and dancers in silver body paint provided the more modern entertainment touches.

“We are like a vintage wine or the finest extra virgin olive oil,” Mayor Filippo Berselli extolled as he joined the festivities. “Perhaps we are poor in resources, but we are rich in history and beauty.”

Berselli, 63, has owned property in Montefiore for years, but moved here from Bologna only last year. He is a prominent figure in the conservative National Alliance party and a multi-term national legislator.

His political clout could not have hurt Montefiore’s election to “prettiest” status. With wavy white hair and twinkling blue eyes, Berselli could also run for prettiest mayor in Italy.

But is Montefiore really one of the most beautiful towns in all of Italy? To be frank, Montefiore, for all its efforts, would probably not be on most people’s must-see lists. But it does tell the story of many a community faced with the challenge of how to survive, maybe even grow, while preserving its distinct and quaint character.

By one estimate, 3,600 Italian villages with fewer than 2,000 people each are endangered. Like many of them, Montefiore saw its population decline steadily in the 1960s and ‘70s as people sought work in urban centers or immigrated abroad.

The exodus began to level off in the 1980s when a handful of families returned or chose Montefiore for their vacation or retirement homes. Today the population stands at about 1,900, said Cipriani, the deputy mayor, though only about 350 people live inside the historic-center walls, and most residents are elderly.

Aside from a little farming, there is no economic base to speak of. Cipriani, for example, works for the highway department in Cattolica, a 20-minute drive from Montefiore; Mayor Berselli maintains his law practice in Bologna, 80 miles away.

In addition to its two restaurants, Montefiore has a five-room hotel, two grocery stores, a post office, five police officers, a school up to the fifth grade that currently has 60 pupils and a bank that is open on Tuesdays and Fridays. There is no newsstand or hospital, but there are two doctors who take turns seeing patients.

Two of the town’s three barbers have died; the third is in his 70s and looked a bit like Rip Van Winkle the other day as he sat in the chair of his empty shop, gazing over his own long, gray beard.

Father Pier Giorgio Terenzi, the parish priest, says his congregation at the Gothic St. Paul’s Church is largely elderly, and he performs far more funerals than baptisms. But he believes people are beginning to come to Montefiore, thanks in part to the town’s self-promotion.

“It’s the only way to keep the town standing on its feet,” he said over coffee on the village square as a mouse scurried by.

The hamlet’s charm comes in part from its slow pace and the handsome old stone buildings, painted in soft shades of ochre and cream, that line the narrow hillside roads. For miles around, signs produced by the association declare to travelers that they are approaching “One of the Prettiest Villages in Italy.”

Lifelong residents like Caterina Casadei, the butcher’s wife, and newer arrivals like Luli Ocelli, who came here 10 years ago to sell groceries with her husband, agree that the town’s appearance has benefited from the marketing effort: freshly planted flowers, repaired pavement, new street lighting. Plus, they love the tranquillity of their surroundings, even though they feel the place is in some respects fading away.

“I can let my children play outside without worrying, and that’s great,” said Ocelli, 38. “But there were more people before, and we used to have more work.”

Casadei, 58, said her adult children had moved away to find jobs, although they dream of returning to the village they love.

“There used to be a lot more families,” she said in the butcher shop, deserted during a recent visit despite the imminent lunchtime hour. “The older ones died, the younger ones went away. I won’t say we’re extinct, but almost.”

Montefiore’s attempt to rescue itself treads a fine line: attracting enough tourists and investment to inject life into the economy without overloading the town’s limited capacity or ruining its charm. Many a Tuscan jewel or Amalfi oasis has found itself crushed in the stampede of sightseers and ambitious developers.

One safeguard, Cipriani noted, is a strict set of local rules about what can be built and how the town should look, from paint colors to the red-tile roofs.

Second, he said Montefiore’s goal was to fix its place on the circuit of a “certain kind” of tourist, one who can appreciate the town in its context of history and relatively unspoiled nature.

“We’re not really looking for mass tourism,” he said. “We’d like maybe a hundred tourists a day, not thousands. We don’t want to exaggerate.”