Nicknamed Italy's "Little Provence," Sancto Lucio de Coumboscuro is an isolated village in almost every sense. Situated near the border between the Piedmont region of Italy and France, visitors either need to fly to Turin, and take a train and then a bus, or drive south from Provence in order to reach it.

Those who do make the trip here would be forgiven for wondering if they're in the right country, particularly when locals bid them goodbye with the unfamiliar "arveire" rather than "arrivederci." The official language of Coumboscuro is Provençal, an ancient medieval neo-Latin dialect of Occitan, the language spoken across the Occitania region of France.