Dying village bets on tourism
With Swiss punctuality, the village of Corippo comes to life at 8:15 a.m., when people gather in the church square to get their daily bread.
It is delivered by Eros Mella, a baker who every morning drives the hairpin turns of the scenic Verzasca Valley, in the Italian-speaking region of southern Switzerland.
In the summer months, Mella’s buns and loaves are bought by the locals and a few holidaymakers.
But in the snowy winter months, “I drive up here for two or three clients,” Mella said.
The village now has only12 full-time residents — not only Switzerland’s smallest population, but also perhaps its oldest, with an average age of 75.
The village’s demographic decline is part of a broader problem and debate over how to halt the drop in Europe’s rural population and how to find alternative economic opportunities to farming to keep younger people in villages like these.
The regional authorities think they may have a solution to help preserve Corippo: In July, officials agreed to allow a publicly financed local foundation to turn a handful of the village’s 30 abandoned houses into a hotel.
The plan borrows from a model used in nearby Italy, known as albergo diffuso, or scattered hotel.
Such establishments were first built in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy, to revive villages that had been destroyed by an earthquake in 1976, said Fabio Giacomazzi, an architect, who is the president of the Corippo foundation.
“We’re doing something new for Switzerland, but knowing that it can be done,” he said.
Initially, the hotel is set to have about 25 beds, spread across a cluster of soon-to-be-refurbished houses. The hotel’s public space will pivot around a new reception area situated within the village’s seasonal restaurant, which will be enlarged and revamped. After 2019, more beds will be added, as well as a seminar room that executives could rent for a corporate retreat.
Corippo’s non-profit foundation says it has already secured 2.2 million Swiss francs out of the 3.2 million needed to start the hotel next year. (The Swiss franc is about equivalent to the dollar). Most of this money is public funding, coupled with bank loans.
Spending the night in a double bedroom will cost between 100 and 150 Swiss francs, in line with the pricing of hotels in the valley, according to Giacomazzi.
But even though Corippo faces an existential threat, the hotel has received a lukewarm response from residents, some of whom criticize the focus on tourists rather than on their own basic needs, like addressing a deficient water supply system.