“There’s this building, the one behind it and the one with the balcony over there,” says Michele Bitetti, standing on a terrazza in the Sicilian town of Ragusa. He’s pointing out various parts of his hotel, the Giardino sul Duomo, to monocle – which might not sound like a particularly challenging task, except that this is an albergo diffuso (“scattered hotel”). That means the hotel’s 16 rooms are dotted around this beautiful neighbourhood. Ten years ago, the buildings that now house them were abandoned, symptoms of a depopulation trend that has hollowed out communities across the Bel Paese – a consequence of mass emigration, declining work opportunities and a plummeting birth rate.

In Sicily, these factors have dramatically converged and entire villages in the interior of the Mediterranean’s largest island have been boarded up. In the region’s more prosperous coastal areas, piecemeal losses have led to scatterings of abandoned buildings, giving towns a gap-toothed look. This was the case in Ragusa, many of whose citizens had left the old town (known as Ibla) either for the new suburbs that climb vertiginously up the opposite hill or for a new life across the ocean. At around the same time that Giancarlo dall’Ara, a young hospitality consultant from northwestern Italy, devised the albergo diffuso concept as a way of reviving tourism in the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region, the regional government passed a law that provided funding and tax breaks to anyone starting a business in Ragusa or Siracusa.

This is what enabled Bitetti and his family to begin developing some buildings around an ancient garden into Giardino sul Duomo. Neighbours were initially resistant, wary of the effect that an influx of tourists might have on that perennial urban issue of parking. But, as Bitetti puts it, “Now they are grateful because we have renovated their neighbourhood and their houses are worth something.” For tourists attracted to the autonomy of private rentals, but who still appreciate the service provided by more traditional hotels, the albergo diffuso offers a middle way. “If people start to come back and those who already live here begin to renovate their homes, the story changes,” says Bitetti. “It’s a virtuous circle.” There are currently about 150 alberghi diffusi in Italy. At a time when hundreds of communities are facing extinction due to depopulation, such businesses are breathing new life into these beautiful villages.