Magic Towns Italy

Magic Towns
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Magic Towns Italy is the podcast for expats and retirees considering life in Italy. We explore towns in depth — from lifestyle and healthcare to education and transport — and share expat-relevant news and insights. Each episode offers honest, practical guidance to help you find your ideal place. Discover more with our Town Explorer at Magictowns.it

  1. 1 H FA

    Italy’s 7% Tax Regime Expands: The New Towns Now in Play

    Discover the latest Italian legal update that could reshape your retirement plans. Learn how a simple change expands the 7% pensioner tax regime, offering more town choices for retirees.

    12 min

  2. 28 MAR

    Property in Italy Traps: An Interview With Realtor Justin Curtis Mavity

    Luca: Happy Saturday everyone. Welcome back to the Magic Towns Italy podcast This week we have a special guest. Justin Curtis Mavity. He’s been a real estate agent, one of the very few qualified, licensed, real estate agents from America in Italy. After 10 years in the country, he has a lot to say about buying a property, which areas to pick, which areas to avoid. You can just hear straight in his words now. Nice to meet you Justin. Justin: You as well. Luca. Luca: I think it would be interesting to start from how you got to Italy. Justin: In 2017. I had been a teacher for about 15 years. I was a music teacher, in a public middle school in a suburb of Denver. And I’d always had this love of Italy. I’d been on several vacations before, and in fact, that’s how I discovered Bologna. We [00:01:00] stopped in Bologna and I said, wow, this place is magic. I studied Italian for a year, a whole year, and before I kind of started getting my feet under the ground and I could be, you know, functional. In Italy, Luca: Did you have a network or did you just pick Bologna because you liked it when you visited? Uh, Justin: In Denver we have an Italian friend, Lucia, who is from Bologna. And so that was, uh, that was the connection. At least there was somebody, uh, that I could reach out to in case of, emergency. Luca: So you’ve been there for the best part of 10 years? Justin: Yeah. For the best part of 10 years. It’s changed quite a lot, honestly. I mean, when I first came to Bologna, it was. It was a touristy city in the summer, of course, but not as much as Florence or Rome or Milan in the last few years, especially after COVID tourism here has exploded. It’s, it’s noticeable. And then of course, you know, May and July are just, just chaos if you’re in Piazza Maggiore at this point. Yeah, Luca: That still doesn’t explain how you got into real estate here, right? Justin: So, real estate in the United States was always going to be my backup plan, my, my second career, I started so [00:02:00] young, I could have retired at 52. Uh, I’m gonna be 45 this year. Luca: Go 81. Justin: Yeah, go 81. Exactly. After I got my feet on the ground here, I, of course had to do the, the teaching English thing like many of us do, you know, to get by and to feed yourself and to pay the rent. That was a several years long process just to even get into the real estate course here and get started. It was already something that was in my mind to do. And so when I came here, I thought, gosh, this is a supernatural fit. I mean, I’m an American. This is something I wanted to do. There is nobody basically doing this here that I know of. Luca: Huge gap. Justin: Yeah, absolutely. I got my real estate license in the spring in May of 2023. And I’m sure you guys are a bit familiar with this process, that you have to do the, the written multiple choice exam and if you pass that, then you need to go onto this oral exam in front of a panel of experts and a live audience. I passed that and I thought, gosh, I’m gonna get picked up by, by anybody. So I went to all the big agencies in town and they’re like, you can answer phones and do translations. Luca: Really? [00:03:00] Justin: Wow. That’s all. That’s all we can do with you. And then you can work. But I did find a small local agency. They didn’t quite know what to do with me either, but at least the...

    20 min

  3. 21 MAR

    Demographics: Which Italian Towns Will Survive?

    Luca: Happy Saturday everyone, and welcome back to the Magic Towns Italy podcast with Luca, and most importantly, Anna. Anna: Yes, ciao a tutti. Hi everyone. Today we’re diving into some fascinating new findings from a demographic study, Magic Towns Italy conducted using data from 2019 to 2025. We’ll talk about which towns are growing or shrinking, how well they keep young people, and how much pressure they are under from aging populations. So if you’re a retiree or an expat thinking of relocating here, this is definitely for you. Luca: Exactly. So we analyzed detailed population data for over 7,500 Italian towns. And, uh, before you tune onto another [00:01:00] podcast, because you’re not a huge data fan, what we’re gonna be sharing with you are the implications of the study. Consider this for instance, that the idyllic village that you’re looking at could within 10 years turn into a place that doesn’t have a pharmacy, doesn’t have a doctor, or doesn’t have a supermarket. This happens in Italy, so it’s worth looking out for this. Demographics make a huge difference as to whether a town thrives or fades. So if you’re looking for a place to live in Italy for the long run, you will want to look at the signs. Anna: Yeah, I mean, nobody wants to move into a beautiful town, only to find out 10 years later that it’s become a ghost village. Let’s start with the big picture. What did the study look at? Luca: We focused on three simple but very important questions. Number one, is the town growing or shrinking? Two, are young adults staying or leaving? And three, how quickly is [00:02:00] the population getting older. Anna: and what are the key insights? Luca: Let’s start with a sad fact, which is the most Italian towns are shrinking. In fact, across the towns we looked at the general trend is for a loss of, uh, about half a percentage point of population per year. And only about a quarter of Italian towns are actually growing in population. That’s one in four. And if you look at it the other way around, it means that three out of four Italian towns are shrinking. The towns that are growing at disproportionately medium sized towns, imagine towns around 10 to 20,000 inhabitants, which are service centers or commuter towns rather than, uh, huge cities or tiny villages. Anna: Oh, so three quarters are getting smaller. That is huge. So the typical little village we all imagine, chances are it’s quietly empty out. And the ones that are growing tend to be market towns or places within reach of cities, not the remote hilltop [00:03:00] hamlets. Luca: Exactly. Now talking about youth retention, the ability to retain young people, we found that about 50% of towns are able to retain or attract young adults. Unfortunately, the other half are losing the 20 somethings and the 30 somethings. And not surprisingly, larger towns and cities have an edge here, meaning that, uh, they’re more likely to attract young people for university or jobs. Anna: It makes sense. Young adults often move to cities like Milan or Bologna for work or study, but yeah, it’s interesting that only half hang on to their youth. If a place lose its young people, it’s basically losing its future, isn’t it? Luca: Yeah. Sad but true. And the last part getting older. Aging. This is just a countrywide phenomenon. We saw that pretty much every town has an aging population getting older on average. Even those that attract some young [00:04:00] people. And of course, and we’ve discussed this in several podcasts, the low b...

    15 min

  4. 14 MAR

    How €1 Homes Changed Mussomeli (and What Happens Next)

    Anna: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Magic Towns Italy podcast. Luca: Welcome back. Happy Saturday everyone. Anna: Happy Saturday. So, yeah, today we’re talking about, one euro homes, Sicily, visas. Luca: And before you say, oh no, another episode about one euro homes, we’re actually starting with something completely novel, which is the first one euro home program in northern Italy. Anna: What? Luca: Really? Yes. Anna don’t act all surprised. You wrote an article about that. Anyway, it’s just an inside joke. So this week? Anna: Yeah, tell me more about that. Sorry. Luca: Yeah, so this week the towns of Recoaro, [00:01:00] Posina, and Valli del Pasubio, very near Vicenta. And for those who know where Vicenza is, that’s very near Venice have announced that the first batch of one euro homes in those, uh, lovely mountain villages. Anna: Oh, okay. And why just now? Luca: Well, you see, it’s actually a very interesting area that I personally know. I would say intimately. It was a magnet for tourists about a hundred years ago. Even Nietzsche, the German philosopher, used to go on holiday there and Anna: are you joking? Luca: No, no. Really is true. There’s proof of it. He wrote about it. He wrote, that, it was one of the most beautiful places they had ever been to, but, it kind of fell off the map tourism wise. Because, uh, spas are not as popular now as they used to be in the past in Italy at least. And so even when I was a child at this [00:02:00] place, which was in huge tourist magnet had become less popular in the past few years. It has suffered a massive exodus of people that go and work and live in the nearby cities. So there’s a lot of empty homes and quite simply the local governments decided to make them available to investors and people that want to move there preferentially to restore very much like the schemes in southern Italy. Anna: Yeah, but these are just the first ones in Northern Italy. Luca: Exactly. First ones in Northern Italy. So if you wanna know more about this, go to magictowns.it and read the article in which we cover everything about this brand, brand new program. Anna: And be the first one to buy them. Luca: Yeah, maybe. And then we can have a chat with there about how you feel about that. That is, if Anna and I don’t buy them first. What else is on our episode today, Anna? We have an interview right? Anna: Yeah, we met George after visiting Mussomeli ourselves, and it was, how was it, Luca, because you went [00:03:00] there. Luca: George is the English beating heart of Mussomeli now. We spent, half an hour chatting with him about how things are going, how the city is changing now that he has brought in his massive social media following. He also has some new plans that he briefly mentions and he’s going to officially unveil in the next couple of weeks. So without further ado, here’s a little excerpt of our chat with George. Hi George. How are you? George: Hello. How are we doing? Gill: Hi. I think we missed you by a day in Mussomeli Luca: But we met some of...

    16 min

  5. 7 MAR

    Sara Shepherd’s Journey From Australia To Le Marche

    Luca: Happy Saturday to our listeners. We’re back with the Magic Towns Italy podcast. I am Luca Anna: and Anna. Today we are heading back to one of the regions that often gets overlooked in conversations about moving to Italy, but really shouldn’t. Luca: People go to Italy, they imagine I’m gonna go to Tuscany, Rome. Milan maybe Puglia, but Le Marche is off the radar for most people. And one of the things we like to do at Magic Towns is look a little bit further. Anna: Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, Le Marche have the sea, the mountains, beautiful towns, strong food culture. It’s a beautiful area. This area also feels more structured than most of Central Italy, and there are lots of towns that qualify for the [00:01:00] 7% tax scheme Luca: of which you have spoken time and time and time again. You are the expert. Anna: Yeah. Luca: So today we’re going to discuss the process of settling down in the Marche through the voice of our guest, Sara. Sarah is originally from Australia and she moved to Italy after what she , described as a bit of a midlife crisis. She came to Italy to study Gastronomic Sciences. I didn’t even know it was a thing before hearing it from her. And then she made the decision to stay in Italy and to build something of our own. Anna: Yeah. You know what I liked about Sara’s story is that it isn’t random at all. Like she didn’t fall in love with a postcard and jump, she approached the move very thoughtfully. She had a spreadsheet criteria, a town size in mind, access to airports, access to trains, and then eventually she found herself in Fabriano. Luca: I thoroughly [00:02:00] approve of that approach as you can imagine. And the property angle in talking to Sarah is interesting too. It’s not like she came, she bought a small apartment and settled down, or she took on a big renovation project and added to, into her background in food, hospitality and walking internationally, and she imagined a creative and community-based future for the property she was fixing up. Anna: Yeah. So in this episode you’ll hear about why she choose the town of Fabriano, what surprised her about moving inland rather than to the coast, how she found the buying and renovation process in Italy, and also what she sees in Le Marche as a place for food tourism reason and as lower, more intentional travel. Luca: So without further ado, here is Anna with Sara on living in the Marche. Sara: I am from Australia and i’ve been living in Melbourne for most of my life, but I’m from a [00:03:00] small country town about the same size as Fabriano. And I’ve worked in the food industry all of my life. I suppose the kind of reason that I came to Italy was a bit of a midlife crisis because I’m 50 and I applied for the University of Gastronomic Science. Anna: Mm-hmm. Sara: Um, which is located in Bra in Piemonte, and it’s a university that was started by Carlo Petrini from the Slow Food movement. I was accepted. So I’ve done a Master’s of Food Communication and Marketing, and I decided to stay. Anna: And then from Bra you moved to Le Marche. Sara: Yeah, so I really enjoyed that year in Bra. The trains were amazing. I could get to Milan really easily and just as a right size town I think as well. So when I did start my kind of like, oh, maybe I’ll just move somewhere in Italy, look around, I had quite a detailed spreads...

    13 min

  6. 28 FEB

    Exploring Sicily: Tour Highlights, One Euro Homes, Expat Life

    Luca: Hey Anna Anna: Hi Luca. Where are you right now? Luca: I’m actually at Catania Airport. Anna: Why? Luca: I’ve just come back from a little tour of Sicily. I spent a week going around. Visiting places. Meeting up with expats. It was, it was very enjoyable. My only problem with Sicily is that every time I go to Sicily, I put on three or four kgs. Anna: Mm-hmm. Luca: So it’s a bad place for me to be. The, the food is amazing, but there’s a lot of it that’s fried. So it’s good, but it’s dangerous. Anna: Oh, and where have you been? Luca: There was a bit of a wide tour, started off in Caltagirone. Licata Sciacca and then went off to Mussomeli. No. Of which, you know, yes. You know a lot about Mussomeli, so, And then ended up back in, Catania. Anna: But sorry. Are [00:01:00] the one euro houses real there, or is just. Luca: Yes, yes. Oh, I can attest to the fact that they exist. There’s not many of them. In fact, I don’t think there’s any of them left. That’s actually a funny, a funny thing that all the expats I met, none of them bought a one euro home. They heard about the place from, of course from George Laing, and we know him. From the one euro home system, but none of them bought a one euro home, but they’re still affordable homes, you know, so. Anna: Yeah. So did you get to see any of these properties? Like what condition are they actually in? Luca: Yeah, so the, you have to understand this. Mussomeli like many Sicilian towns h as an old historical center that was not made for cars. Tiny homes, very often in a very bad state, surrounded by newer buildings, mostly erected in the sixties and the seventies. I actually had a chat with an architect a Sicilian architect yesterday who does [00:02:00] not want to be named. He told me that this is almost inevitable in Sicily, that he cannot think of a single town in Sicily that does not have this layer of frankly, a bit ugly buildings from the sixties and the seventies around it. So what you can play with is the size of the historical center. Some have a very large historical center like Catania, Catania, five kilometers wide historical center. Some of them have a very small historical center and, in the case of Mussomeli, you have the outskirts, which are like I don’t wanna say modern, you know, semi modern sixties and seventies buildings. Not super pretty, although the nature around it is very pretty. Then you have the historical center, which has all these very cute, lanes, alleys, stairs, going up and down, winding, absolutely not made to be driven with a wide car. I am thankful that I had a, a Cinquecento, Fiat Cinquecento with me [00:03:00] so it will fit and the one euro homes are in this section. They’re mostly very old buildings, they need a lot of love. Anna: Does it feel like a place you could live year round or more like a slow rural escape? Luca: It is surprising when George says that there’s a lot of expats. He is not kidding. I personally met quite a few of them and I’m just gonna say hi to Charlotte and Tim, I know you’re listening, so I’m saying hi to you. There’s ma...

    13 min

  7. 21 FEB

    Italian Education: What It’s Like Growing Up and Attending School in Italy

    ​Anna: Today we’re talking about something that matters enormously if you’re thinking of moving here with children. What is actually like to grow up and to go to school in Italy? There’s a lot of mythology around the Italian education system. It’s chaotic or outdated. Others, imagine something like idyllic and community driven, but the truth as usual sits somewhere in between. Luca: That’s right. Hi Anna. So if you zoom out and look at the data, Italy’s broadly in line with the average of developed countries. In the latest PISA rankings, the PISA rankings are these international rankings of various types of education, Italian 15 year olds score around the average in maths. A little bit above average in reading and a little bit below in science, Roughly three quarters of the students [00:01:00] reach solid of baseline across subjects, and where it is weaker is at the very top end. There are fewer academic high flyers than in some Northern European and Asian systems. So it’s a system that works and works fairly well, but it is not especially elite. But we don’t want to talk about the data. You’ll be happy to hear that, Anna. We actually want to talk about what it feels like and, um, talking about that you actually grew up in that, inside the Italian system. Talking about the big picture, what did it feel like to grow up in a small Italian town? Anna: I actually feel very lucky, because, you know, there is this kind of freedom that just comes with it naturally. So you know, your village, you can basically walk the whole thing and that makes you feel independent, even if you’re like just a kid. So, you know, I just grab my bike, I go buy bread or text my friends to figure out when to meet up. I’m going to cinema. It seems like I’m [00:02:00] still doing these things, but Luca: I know the cinema in your town, uh, it’s like, uh, tiny, but you know, still kids going to the center by themselves. It’s not taken for granted these days. Anna: So yeah. You know, little things, but they made me feel independent. And because there’s less stuff to do, you end up being more creative about it. So, you know, you’re playing the hills behind the house. You make things up, you, you figure things out on your own. And I think that shapes you in a good way. And I think that it, at least back then it felt really safe. Luca: Maybe we’ll talk in the future about whether it feels less safe now, but anyway. Yeah, that sense of embeddedness in a place is something the expat families often underestimate. It isn’t just about test scores, it is more about the feeling of being a child in Italy. But since we’re talking about schools, most Italian children attend public schools run by the state, and the [00:03:00] state system is what carries the country. There are private schools, but historically have not, they have not been seen as premium. There are income gaps, of course. Immigrant students have increased now, right now in the makeup, about 11% of the students. And that’s double what it was 15 years ago. But once you adjust for the socioeconomic factors of the families of origin, basically, once you cancel out the differences in, family economics immigrant children, Italian children perform the same in the Italian system. So that’s good news. And how did you feel school was like at these different stages, Anna? Anna: It depends. Kindergarten was wonderful. We had English classes, art, and this thing where the older kids would help the younger ones. So it really felt community driven. Primary school was, it was [00:04:00] good. Apart from the grembiule, I hated it. Luca: Have to tell,...

    15 min

  8. 14 FEB

    Life-Changing Journey: From North America to Sardinia – An Interview with Charlotte Fortier-Mutzl

    Anna: Welcome back to Magic Towns Italy. Today we’re heading to Sardinia, not as tourists, but through the eyes of someone who chose to build a life there from scratch. Luca: You might have seen her on Instagram as @americanmominthemed, Charlotte Fortier-Mutzl. Charlotte, don’t kill me if I didn’t pronounce that perfectly, is originally from Quebec. She grew up in the US and eventually left everything behind to travel through Europe. In the next few years, there was a harrowing succession of moving to Rome on a working holiday visa, starting businesses, surviving COVID, and then relocating to Sardinia without ever having seen it. Anna: So in this conversation we talk about risk, starting a business in Italy, learning the language from zero, raising children on the island, and what slow living [00:01:00] actually feels like when you’re living in every day. Luca: If you’ve ever wondered about Sardinia’s slower pace of life, this episode offers a honest perspective from Charlotte. Anna: Let’s get into it. Hi, Charlotte, how are you? You’re in Cagliari right now, right? Charlotte: Yes, that’s correct. Anna: Nice to meet you finally. And two things, draw me to you, your story. The first one is the sweetness and sincerity in the way you share what happens to you every day. Like you really do so much while being a mom and and entrepreneur. And now I still, you even learning Sardinian. Second that you move exactly to Sardinia, which is absolutely, I think one of my favorite places all over the world. Can you tell me a bit more about your story? Charlotte: I’m from Quebec, from Canada, the French part. And, uh, at 12 years old I moved with my family to the United States, to Florida. And then eventually, I moved to San Diego in California where I lived for a few years and I loved it [00:02:00] there. But yeah, I went through a bad breakup. I kind of felt for a long time that I was kind of out of place, you know, and I kind of grew up feeling like the United States, Canada is like the center of the world, and I knew that there was more out there, and so I, I had this, this need to go experience something else. And so I sold my car and I sold everything I had basically. And I took a plane ticket to Europe and traveled by myself. And did seven countries in two months and fell in love with Italy. I went to Barcelona and got a yoga teaching certification. And then I decided to start in Italy. I had like a working holiday visa and, I was teaching yoga in the park, working at a bar in the evening. And then I met my husband, in Rome. We lived there for a few years, I think three years. [00:03:00] But we lived there through COVID and having our first son. Afterwards everything just became a bit too chaotic. And we lived in an agriturismo in Umbria for like six months. And we loved it there. We were actually looking for houses there ’cause we knew we didn’t wanna waste money on rent anymore. ‘Cause we had moved, I think, to 12 different apartments since my son had been born. So we just wanted some stability. And then one day we were walking and we were freezing. We were in our boots and I’m looking at my husband, I’m like, what are we doing? Are we really gonna live here? It’s too cold for me. And I think having grown up, you know, in Florida, in California, I was really missing the beach. And so I got online and started researching, some of the warmest places in Italy, scuba diving, snorkeling, all this stuff. And then I came across Sardinia. And in reality, I didn’t even know Sardinia existed. That’s how ignorant I [00:04:00] was. And my husband said, well, you’...

    22 min
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Descrizione

Magic Towns Italy is the podcast for expats and retirees considering life in Italy. We explore towns in depth — from lifestyle and healthcare to education and transport — and share expat-relevant news and insights. Each episode offers honest, practical guidance to help you find your ideal place. Discover more with our Town Explorer at Magictowns.it

Informazioni

  • Creatore
    Magic Towns
  • Anni di attività
    2025 - 2026
  • Puntate
    25
  • Classificazione
    Contenuti adatti a tutti
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Magic Towns
  • Sito web del podcast
    Magic Towns Italy

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