The Sicilian council is selling 22 derelict houses to attract new life to the village.

If you’ve always fancied living in a picturesque green village with its very own medieval castle, a picture perfect piazza with a man called Pino selling home-made ice-cream from his living room, now is your chance.

Thirteen houses are still up for sale for the price of a few pastizzi in the idyllic hill-top Sicilian village of Gangi.

The local council decided to sell 22 derelict houses bequeathed to it by locals for the price of €1 to attract new life to the village.

Five houses have already been snapped up and the council is in the process of concluding sales of another four.

The houses are all a castello, an Italian term for houses with several storeys. On average, the houses have four storeys, covering a total area of 60 square metres.

About 7,000 people live in this medieval town, a population roughly as big as that of Ħamrun’s, with the difference that it is spread over an area of 127 square kilometres of rolling wheat fields and wooded valleys.

The €1 spent to purchase the property comes with obligations. Buyers must pay a €5,000 guarantee to the local council to ensure they will actually renovate the properties.

This money is returned if the building is restored within three years.

Most of the houses on offer need some serious work: new roofs and floors, a new electricity system, plumbing and sewage.

Renovation costs, according to estate agents based in Sicily, are estimated at between €25,000 and €35,000. Legal fees associated with the purchase will amount to about €6,000 per property.

So, in total, buyers have to fork out an extra €46,000 over and above the €1.

Mario Spiteri, co-owner of Go Sicily, an estate agency based in Malta and Sicily, had not heard of the initiative but vouched for the beauty of the place.

“Gangi is a sweet village and projects like these breathe some life into the area as locals move out to the cities to find work and leave behind them a ghost town.”

The 12th century village is an hour’s drive south of the picturesque holiday resort of Cefalù. It is a three-hour drive from the port of Pozzallo and a one-hour drive from Catania, served from Malta by air and sea.

“Accessibility might put the Maltese people off a bit. Normally, Maltese who buy property in Sicily would want to go there for short breaks so would not want to spend half a day to get there,” Mr Spiteri said.

The popularity of the Sicilian property market is slowly growing among the Maltese.

According to Mr Spiteri, Sicilian residences are commonly popular with Maltese politicians who see Sicily as a getaway from the public eye and with business people reaching retirement age.

Gangi is in the same province as Corleone, the town which is the backdrop of The Godfather books and films. However, Giuseppe Ferrello, the mayor of Gangi, insisted to members of the British media that the village is safe from the mafia.

“Sicily, unfortunately, has a bad reputation. We would not think twice of taking our children to London but do not feel comfortable in a village in Sicily.

“The truth is that there is more criminality in London,” he said, adding that only the main cities, like Palermo, posed some problems.

He described Gangi as a very tranquil village: “If your car breaks down at midnight people will stop to help you.”

This initiative by Gangi is not new to Sicily.

Other communes have been trying to boost the population of the region in similar manners. Carrega Ligure, in Alessandria, did something similar when it ended up with only 98 inhabitants.

Salemi, in Trapani, tried to do the same two years ago on an initiative of then mayor Vittorio Sgarbi, but the project reportedly failed due to problems with the mafia.