The villages the state tried to move

Law 619 of 17 May 1952 was titled "Reclamation of the Sassi districts in the town of Matera." UNESCO records that the entire Sassi population was relocated in the 1950s to improve sanitation and renovate the old districts; the abandonment that followed caused some degradation. People began returning from the 1980s, restoring residential use. In 1993, UNESCO inscribed the Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian Churches of Matera on the World Heritage List. That sequence is documented; it does not turn the Sassi into a museum set or make a World Heritage inscription a guarantee about any individual stay or service.

A 1935 royal decree admitted old Calcata to transfer under Italy's 1908 law on moving settlements. Lazio's records say the new-settlement plan was approved in 1955 and a total-transfer project in 1961. That was not the end of the old village: a 1993 regional law admitted it to consolidation and sanitary works, and removed the previous demolition obligation from owners who met the law's conditions. The municipality says people from Calcata moved to the plateau above the rock, while about 70 people now live permanently in the old village, many from other cities or countries. The story is not that no one moved; it is that the planned disappearance became a different, legally documented outcome.

Roscigno's municipality says that, under special laws for landslide-prone towns in 1902–08, residents were required to leave Roscigno Vecchia for a new center a few kilometres uphill. The municipality's visitor page likewise describes the old center as abandoned in the early twentieth century because of the landslide threat, but it is not simply a frozen ruin: a former rectory restored by the Salerno Soprintendenza houses a museum of rural social life and work. In 2024 the Soprintendenza, the municipality, the national park and local partners publicly discussed a City Museum project for Roscigno Vecchia. That is evidence of continuing cultural work around the site, not proof of access, activity or an event on a visitor's date.

A story reported in March 2012 said the mayor of Falciano del Massico had ordered residents not to die while the town lacked its own cemetery. The municipal online ordinance register now available begins in January 2018, so the original text, number and expiry cannot be checked there. The claim that the order is still in force is therefore not supported and is not repeated here. What the municipality does document is a 2024 executive project for its own cemetery and, in 2025, a shuttle to the cemetery at San Lorenzo di Casanova in Carinola.

On 19 June 2026 the mayor of Norbello in Sardinia, population about 1,100, signed an order titled Vietato ammalarsi, requiring citizens to recover on their own in the shortest possible time and recommending positive thinking, physical and moral resistance and, failing that, luck. The text declares its own provocative intent. The village has no resident doctor.

Istat's latest annual census-and-population release identified Morterone, in the province of Lecco, as Italy's least-populous municipality at 31 December 2024, with 32 residents. The national historical census tables record 399 residents in 1921, its highest entry in the series published there. Morterone is still a municipality with its own public administration and resident-services portal. The 32 is a dated population count, not a promise that the town will remain Italy's smallest or that any particular municipal office or service is available on a given day.