Lollove is a tiny medieval village surrounded by greenery and rocks of the hinterland of Sardinia, with a curious and easily memorized name, capable of making you go back in time, between the laundresses at the fountain and the food cooked by the fireplace. There lives a dozen people. The seventy stone houses fifteen minutes drive from Nuoro, have been included in recent days among the most beautiful villages in Italy. The village has been ‘dispossessed’, in recent decades, by the escape to the city of its inhabitants, but now it could be reborn as an ideal travel destination for those looking for an unconventional experience, inspired by slo tour tourism, also thanks to an association that would like to relaunch the village as a destination’ detox The ‘slow tourism’ and prefers secluded destinations, but rich in history, tradition, food and wine culture. All characteristics that the ancient rural settlement of Lollove possesses, and that have led the Municipal Administration of Nuoro, of which the small center is a fraction, to ask and obtain that it be included in the elite of the Most beautiful villages in Italy from the homonymous Association, which aims to enhance the potential of small Italian towns excluded from the most popular tourist routes.
TARGET NEW RESIDENTS. Lollove will appear in Guide 2022 of the most beautiful villages in Italy and on the association’s website and will be able to participate in the initiatives created ad hoc for the registered villages. The next step of the municipality of Nuoro, anticipates at breaking latest news the assessor to the landscape, Valeria Romagna, will be the participation in a call for urban regeneration of villages published by the Sardinia region. The goal is ambitious: to equip Lollove with services and infrastructure that attract, as well as new tourists, also new residents. Most of these (they were over five hundred seventy years ago, now they are twelve) left the village in the 50s, when home comforts had arrived a little everywhere, but not in Lollove. Today’s initiatives of the municipality of Nuoro for the revival and repopulation are added to a constant commitment, started from below a few years ago, which has brought tourists, volunteers and journalists to the small center.
When depopulation increases tourist APPEAL. Ancient lifestyles, untouched nature, no connection: characteristics that can sound like music to the ears of slo tour Words of Simone Ciferni, president of Uniamoci Lollove, an association created to impose the village as an eco-sustainable tourist destination and detox:” we collaborate to transform characteristics such as depopulation and the absence of a signal into attractive elements for tourists in search of authenticity”, explains breaking latest news Ciferno, degree in economics, experiences in London and the United States, and the decision to pass the first lockdon From there the start of a family project of tourist offer and then, a year ago, the birth of the association. “With Uniamoci Lollove we offer, to those who come to visit us, bread and pasta workshops, walks in the middle of nature, the cultivation of the vegetable garden, all strictly without access to the network, which in Lollove does not arrive”.
And the fact of being only twelve to live in the village makes those who come to visit know in a few hours the whole community. “The watchword of our association is ‘inclusivity'”. Here tourists must feel at home: this is why we always work with small numbers in order to respect the maximum sustainable load from such a small population”. Visitors? Many. Foreigners in high season, mostly locals in the cold months. And the Bbc also became interested in the activity of Let’s join Lollove, in 2021, shooting a documentary on it.
HOW DO YOU LIVE IN LOLLOVE. The suggestive lifestyle and very far from the bustle of the city is also found in the story of Salvatore Gusai, who in these stone houses, in 1939, was born there, and from which he left at twenty years old. “When I was a child Lollove came to touch even the seven hundred and fifty inhabitants: there was an elementary school with four teachers. Many people, but no service: there was a lack of water supply, sewers, light. When they all left, in the Fifties, the municipality of Nuoro brought all the connections”, says Gusai laughing. A life outside Sardinia, then the return to the village of Origin two years ago, in a house with a large garden and animals to look after. But there are not only positive aspects: for example, you have to go to Nuoro for any need, even for food purchases. And the Access Road has many broken sections. But then, why did he decide to return? “Because I am in love with Lollove: although I have seen so many beautiful places, this is where I am best”.
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