Molise does not exist - that is the joke Italians use to describe this mountain region southeast of Rome. The hashtag #ilmolisenonesiste gathers more online engagement than the region has residents. But those who actually go there say something completely different: it exists, and it is more beautiful than anything they could have imagined.

The region of fewer than 290,000 inhabitants offers 8,000 euros a year to anyone who moves to one of its depopulated villages. The condition: stay at least three years and open some business or work remotely. Details vary by municipality, but the intention is the same - to stop the disappearance of places where people have been living the same routine since Roman times.

And that is not an exaggeration. Transhumance is still practiced here - seasonal grazing along ancient paths called tratturi, along which sheep walk the same routes as 2,000 years ago. The town of Saepinum-Altilia is a preserved Roman town with a forum, theatre and basilica, almost untouched. In Agnone, the Pontificia Fonderia Marinelli operates - a family bell-casting workshop that has existed since 1040. Not 1940. Ten forty.

Molise is the second smallest region in Italy and the only one created by splitting a larger one. It is only 230 kilometres from Rome, but sounds and feels like a different era. If you are looking for silence, stone, history and a land where real estate still costs what a parking space in Skopje costs - Molise is waiting. And 8,000 euros a year does not hurt.