You Can Sleep Here

Remote villages near extinction are becoming hotels, wooing travelers with one-of-a-kind rooms and intimate restaurants.

- Nikki Ekstein

Roughly 2,500 villages in Italy and almost 3,000 in Spain are at risk of becoming ghost towns. In Japan, 8 million or so buildings sit vacant. As better jobs and modern lifestyles lure young people to cities, what happens to the crumbling hamlets they leave behind?

A few aspiring hoteliers are fighting brain drain and rural flight by turning abandoned buildings in their villages into hospitality hubs. The Italians even have a name for these towns-turned-resorts: alberghi diffusi, or “scattered hotels.”

In Matera, a mountain town in Puglia, one called Sextantio has almost single-handedly put the region back on the tourism map. The hotel’s 18 well-appointed rooms, tucked into cave dwellings that were once part of a sprawling Benedictine monastery, bring travelers from the world over to live the medieval life in this once-forgotten spot. Likewise, entrepreneur John Papadouris has been so successful resurrecting his hometown of Kalopanayiotis in Cyprus— thanks to his 40-room hotel and spa—that the country’s president asked him to join the government and do the same for 115 other communities in the area.

A visit to such properties can feel like a journey to a long-lost, simpler time, but in reality these places are a harbinger of the future, a template for how to save dying towns all around the world. In Romania, the owners of Village Hotel Maramures are attempting to revive Breb, one of Transylvania’s best-preserved traditional hamlets, where residents still ride in horse-drawn carriages. The bed-and-breakfast has rooms in four houses, near the reported doorstep of Dracula’s castle.