For years, people living in Castelnuovo di Porto, a medieval village close to Rome, had put off doing maintenance jobs on their homes, whether it be fixing the roof or cracks in walls caused by earthquakes, because they could not afford it. So when the Italian government said it would foot the entire bill for a range of renovation works, on the sole proviso of rendering buildings energy efficient and earthquake-proof, they could not believe their luck.

“When I first heard about the government getting all this money from the EU, I didn’t think it would affect me in the slightest,” said Chris Warde-Jones, a British photographer born in Italy. “But when people in the village started talking about doing up houses – and there are a lot that need doing up here, quite a few are showing their age – our ears pricked up and we thought: hold on, can we do this too?”