You already know the drill: idyllic hilltop village in Italy with an aging population wants new blood. Normally, the next step is to sell off abandoned houses for €1. Villages from all over the country have seen foreigners snap up property for pennies -- with the deal being that they must renovate the house within a certain amount of time.

But a few are more daring -- such as Candela in Puglia, which offered would-be residents €2,000 ($2,350) to move there in 2017. Now comes an even better deal. Santo Stefano di Sessanio, a walled medieval village in Abruzzo, a region on the eastern side of central-southern Italy, is offering to pay people willing to move and start a business there -- and will even support them by giving them a place to live with nominal rent.