From 1,000 residents, the population dropped to a low of 5 before rebounding to its current 85.
Just six days old, little Pablito became the youngest resident of Ostana when his father took him to the local registry office earlier this week: an event which caused the town's population to swell to 85 inhabitants - of which just 41 live there all year round.
“It's great to finally have someone born here and it shows that our efforts to reverse population decline are slowly working," Ostana Mayor Giacomo Lombardo told The Local.
Lombardo explained that 100 years ago the town was a flourishing mountain community with over 1,000 inhabitants. The population fell to 700 in the post-war years before going into a rapid decline.
“The nadir was reached in the 1980s when the population hit an all-time low of just five permanent residents,” Lombardo said.
But since then the mayor has been working to improve the economy of the town to attract young people and reverse its slide towards becoming a ghost-town.
Today, the town has two restaurants, a shop and bar in addition to its mountain refuge.
In a newly built multi-purpose space, a cinema school runs each year, which manages to attract tens of young people from across Italy.
“The problem is that there is really an absence of politics to help small mountain communities – we are a long way from Rome,” Lombardo said.
Just six days old, little Pablito became the youngest resident of Ostana when his father took him to the local registry office earlier this week: an event which caused the town's population to swell to 85 inhabitants - of which just 41 live there all year round.
“It's great to finally have someone born here and it shows that our efforts to reverse population decline are slowly working," Ostana Mayor Giacomo Lombardo told The Local.
Lombardo explained that 100 years ago the town was a flourishing mountain community with over 1,000 inhabitants. The population fell to 700 in the post-war years before going into a rapid decline.
“The nadir was reached in the 1980s when the population hit an all-time low of just five permanent residents,” Lombardo said.
But since then the mayor has been working to improve the economy of the town to attract young people and reverse its slide towards becoming a ghost-town.
Today, the town has two restaurants, a shop and bar in addition to its mountain refuge.
In a newly built multi-purpose space, a cinema school runs each year, which manages to attract tens of young people from across Italy.
“The problem is that there is really an absence of politics to help small mountain communities – we are a long way from Rome,” Lombardo said.