It looks like the location for a spaghetti western. The flat-topped mountains, sandy terrain and dark-green scrub stretch far into the distance, where the Costa Smerelda’s turquoise seas sparkle in the sun. Up on the hill is Bonnanaro. If this really were a western, they would call it a one-horse town. There is one church, one cafe-bar, one pizzeria and one tourist. Me. I am here to buy a house in Sardinia, for just one euro.
The church has a welcome mat, in English. That seems like a good omen, so I go inside. Sunlight filters through the high windows and the flickering votive candles cast a warm glow. But there is no one here. Outside, the pizzeria is closed.
In the cafe, the owner apologises, saying that she has forgotten the English she learned at school, so I ask in broken Italian about the one-euro houses. Is it true? Is it a scam? Are they just ruins, or could someone live in them?
She doesn’t know, so she throws my question open to her customers – six or seven older men standing round high tables drinking very small, very strong thimblefuls of espresso. I buy a coffee. Drinking it makes me wince, but it admits me to their circle. They tell me there’s no way you can buy a house here for one euro! Not privately. Not a proper house. It’s a project, a scheme dreamed up by the council to attract new people to the city.
City? I ask incredulously. Yes, they assure me. Bonnanaro is a city. In fact, it is the city of wine. Great! It is almost wine o’clock for me. But no – I must gulp down my coffee and hurry, because the City Hall closes at two in the afternoon and won’t open again until tomorrow.
Sure enough, a red and white placard at the municipal building confirms that Bonnanaro is indeed the città dei vini.
The council’s regeneration chief, Signor Soro, welcomes me into his office. He has also forgotten his schoolboy English, so we have a disjointed exchange in bits of different languages.
The inhabitants of Bonnanaro do not speak Italian, but one of four different Sard dialects – or Catalan. Even the road signs have different versions of each place name. But while “Bunnanuru” is pretty close to “Bonnanaro”, other road signs bear place names that are nothing like their official Italian.
Soro explains that the houses on offer are of course worth many hundreds of thousands of euros. They are empty because their owners have died, or moved to the mainland, or just can’t afford to renovate them.
Sceptical and limited by my poor Sardinian, I ask some pretty blunt questions. Do the houses have roofs? Floors? Running water, hot and cold? Electricity? Heating? We are sweltering in 30C temperatures, but I have seen photos of Sardinian sheep huddled together in snow-scattered fields. OK, the pictures were from 1947, but still.
He remains serene and reassures me that it is perfectly possible to just move into the one-euro houses and live here. Yes, they are rundown, and so the council requires anyone who buys them to do them up within two years.
Ah, I cry. But I am British. Since Brexit, I am not allowed to just move to Italy and live here. I could only stay for 90 days at a time, on a tourist visa.
Not a problem, he explains. Whoever buys the houses will not need to live here full-time. They could be used as holiday homes, for example.
I would need to buy a car, too. Here in Italy that’s expensive because of the taxes. You can get a car pretty cheap, but you then have to pay €500 just to transfer the ownership.
There are buses, he informs me. Nothing shakes Mr Soro, although I am clearly not going to snap up one of his houses right away. More importantly, it’s already time for him to go home for his lunch and an afternoon snooze.
I look into the local bus services. It costs €3.10 for a ride into Sassari, the nearest “proper” city, and on weekdays there’s a bus every half hour.
From Sassari it’s another hop by bus or train to Alghero, with its white-sand beaches, pine trees and scuba diving on coral reefs. Then there is the seafood, the marina, the windsurfing and boat trips to Neptune’s Cave.
And – most importantly for me – Sassari also has a little airport, with Ryanair budget flights. Time to fly. But I’ll be back. This one-euro coin is burning a hole in my pocket.
