CAGLIARI, Italy — Sardinia is one of the world’s most beautiful islands, which raises the question: Where is everyone?

Not tourists — there are plenty of those — but locals. The island’s population is 1.57 million, down from 1.64 million three decades ago, but half live in its two largest urban areas, while smaller towns and villages are withering.

The big problem is that people aren’t having babies.

With an average of 1.18 children per woman, Italy has one of the lowest fertility rates in the European Union. Sardinia recorded the lowest rate in Italy, at 0.91 children per woman. Just to keep a population stable, women should have an average of 2.1 children.

High unemployment on the island and better job prospects elsewhere are doing the rest, emptying dozens of villages of their young people.

“The last child was born here 10 years ago,” said Maria Anna Camedda, the mayor of Baradili, Sardinia’s smallest village with a population of 76.

The place is tiny — less than 500 meters separates the “Welcome to Baradili” sign from the one marking the end of the village, which is well-maintained and adorned with photos — like a big family house.

The risk of places like Baradili becoming ghost towns is prompting the island to try to lure in newcomers.

A couple moving to a Sardinian village of fewer than 3,000 residents can receive up to €15,000 to purchase or renovate a home, up to €20,000 to start a business that creates local jobs, and a monthly subsidy of €600 for their first child plus €400 for each subsequent child until they turn 5.

These incentives are part of an anti-depopulation package introduced by the island.

They come on top of local emergency measures, such as the municipality of Ollolai’s offer of €1 houses for newcomers.

Despite the incentives, migrants are snubbing the island.

Romania, Senegal, Morocco, China and Ukraine are the home countries of roughly half of the 52,000 foreigners residing in Sardinia, which is about 3.3 percent of the island’s population. The national average is 8.9 percent.

In 2022, the number of foreigners moving to Sardinia did not account for even a quarter of the population decline that occurred that year.

The Italian demographic winter, which is even tougher in Sardinia, recently forced Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government to allow 500,000 foreign workers into the country over the next three years.

But the population collapse remains stark in small communities like Baradili.

Over 30 years ago, the village closed its one-room primary school, in which all 15 local children, ranging in age from 6 to 10, learned together.

Baradili and nearby villages opted for a rotating school system in which children attend classes in three different villages throughout the year. A free bus picks them up every morning.

Attending high school or reaching a hospital is much harder, as both services are over 30 kilometers away.

The challenges of serving communities like Baradili prompted Meloni’s government to acknowledge in the recent National Strategic Plan for Internal Areas that some parts of the country “cannot set themselves any goals for reversing the [depopulation] trend, but neither can they be left to their own devices.”

The document proposed setting up “a targeted plan to assist them in a process of chronic decline and aging.”

This wording provoked indignation, even among 140 Catholic Church representatives, who denounced the government’s plan as “support for a happy death” of villages. But Camedda is not impressed.

“It was simply put down in black and white what the government — not just this government — has been doing for several decades,” she said.

Baradili is doing everything it can to survive.

It introduced a €10,000 subsidy on top of the incentives granted at the regional level. The village is served by a swimming pool, a football field, tennis and padel courts and even a motorhome park.

In 2022, Baradili celebrated the arrival of four families, which brought nine new residents.

Expat cavalry

While many young Sardinians are leaving small rural villages to embrace urban life, some expats are taking the opposite direction.

Ivo Rovira, a Spanish photographer working for the America’s Cup sailing competition, ended up in his new home village of Armungia by chance.

In 2023 he spent several months in Cagliari, the capital city of Sardinia, snapping photos for the Italian sailboat Luna Rossa. “One day, in January, I was driving toward the interior of the island looking for some snow. I arrived in Armungia, a place I had never heard of before.”

Rovira’s photographer’s eye was captivated by the landscape of the village, which has fewer than 400 residents.

“I parked the car and went for a walk. I found a house in the historic center with a ‘For Sale’ banner. Ten days later, I put down a deposit to buy it,” he said.

After renovating the old house, which used to be a wine shop but had sat empty for 30 years, Rovira and his wife, Ana Ponce, moved to Armungia permanently. They also set up a restaurant that is open a few days per month, depending on demand.

“It takes half an hour to drive to a supermarket along winding roads, but there is an international airport an hour away,” he said.

“We don’t feel like digital nomads; we are real Armungians,” Rovira added.

Bianca Fontana, an Australian with Italian roots, dreamed of moving to Italy after the pandemic.

She joined a friend who was staying in Nulvi, a town of around 2,500 — larger than some tiny communities, but still eligible for the regional grants.

“I bought a house within two weeks. And I moved here about six months later,” Fontana said.

She grew up in a country town in Australia before living in London and Shanghai.

“I did get to a point where I was feeling quite exhausted in bigger cities, and I wanted to find a smaller, quieter place,” she said.

Fontana now talks about her new life in Sardinia on her YouTube channel, which has over 3,000 subscribers. Many of them regularly comment on her videos about renovation grants, work on her own house, archaeological excursions and local wine.

There is also an effort to keep locals from leaving.

Marcello Contu left Sardinia at the age of 18 to move to Turin, and then lived in Barcelona and Australia.

But then he moved to the 120-person village of Bidonì to start a vegan cheese-making business.

“The artisanal production of plant-based cheeses requires great attention, waiting times, experimentation, and daily care that are difficult to reconcile with chaotic environments,” he said.

Contu’s products are now available in dozens of restaurants and shops across Sardinia and the rest of Italy.

“Geographical isolation and a lack of services translate into a constant practical challenge: Sourcing raw materials or making deliveries often requires long journeys, with longer times and higher costs than for those working in better-connected areas,” he said.

But Contu believes that small villages can become “ideal places for developing craft, creative, and sustainability-related activities, because they offer what large cities have often lost: time, spaces on a human scale, authentic relationships, and a strong connection with the local area and nature.”

Rovira and Fontana are also impressed by the capacity of Sardinian villagers to stick together.

Rovira was once told by a neighbor: “We live in such a small village that if we don’t help each other, we’re dead.”

Really, really cheap houses

Ollolai made a name for itself as the town of €1 houses — a project that started in 2016.

According to Francesco Columbu, the local mayor, about 100,000 people registered interest in the €1 houses, but the municipality could only accommodate a few aspiring Ollolai residents.

The scheme acts as an intermediary between owners of old houses — often split across different families of heirs — and those seeking to obtain them for peanuts. As a result, only a handful of foreign families have obtained a €1 house.

Meanwhile, the village has continued to lose inhabitants, dropping from 1,300 when the offer began to 1,150 now.

“While it’s possible that a cultured American or German who loves stone architecture or that of another Sardinian village moves there, this does not create the economic benefits needed to solve problems,” said Anna Maria Colavitti, professor of urban planning at the University of Cagliari.

Colavitti analyzed the results of the €1 houses, concluding that they “alone are not enough, just as incentives for having kids are not enough,” she said.

Colavitti’s study also showed that new owners sometimes decide to resell the €1 property at the same price they paid for it because they cannot afford the higher-than-expected renovation costs or are dissatisfied with their choice.

But the mayor of Ollolai keeps fighting with the tools he has.

“Ollolai will not die so easily. The inland villages of Sardinia have seen their fair share of crises. They went through periods of plague in the 1600s … yet they recovered,” Columbu said.

“We have a better quality of life, and we’re an hour away from some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. I say the beautiful things will never die.”