Darkness falls on the small town of Sambuca di Sicilia, where the council offices on Corso Umberto have been closed for more than three hours. And yet the phones keep ringing, hour after hour.

“They’re calling from Sydney, London, New York,” says the exhausted deputy mayor, Giuseppe Cacioppo. A week after the town announced it was putting up abandoned homes for sale at a euro each, he has fielded requests for information from all over the globe. By Wednesday last week the council had received more than 300 calls and 94,000 emails. Many prospective buyers, not wanting to miss out, grabbed the first available flight to Palermo.

Sambuca sits inside a nature reserve, surrounded by woods and mountains, about an hour’s drive from the Sicilian capital.

In the town hall’s minuscule waiting room there are not enough seats for the dozens of visitors who have come from as far away as Panama, London, Boston and Dubai to get their hands on one of these famed homes for the cost of an espresso. They’re waiting anxiously for Cacioppo to take them on a guided tour of the ruins that are up for sale.

It is quite a sight for 63-year-old Franco Lo Vecchio. Curious to see what the chatter is all about, he has rushed out of his house in the nearby Saraceno quarter in his slippers. He stands, mouth agape, looking at the long queue of foreigners who have come to see what’s on offer.

It’s been a long time since so many people have gathered in the streets of Sambuca: once a bustling town of 9,000 people, it now has about 5,000. Like many small towns in southern Italy, it has been gradually abandoned by citizens seeking work elsewhere.

“The decline began with the industrialisation of the agricultural sector, when machines replaced human labour and forced many peasants to abandon the fields,” says Lo Vecchio, who used to work as a French language teacher. “Then, if that weren’t enough, the earthquake struck and even more families began abandoning their homes.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Franco Lo Vecchio in his house in Sambuca’s Saraceno quarter. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Observer

In January 1968 the earth shook in the Belice valley, in south-west Sicily. Measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale, the earthquake was one of the most powerful to strike Italy, killing 231 people, injuring more than 1,000 and leaving 100,000 homeless. Four towns were razed entirely and others, like Sambuca, suffered terrible damage. The town’s main church, the Chiesa Madre, built around 1420 on part of the ancient Arab castle of Zabut in the oldest part of town, was so badly damaged it had to close.

The story of the Lo Vecchio family reflects the history of Sambuca and the emigratory trend that threatens its survival. In 1955, Franco’s grandfather left for the US in search of work. In 1957, his father moved to Venezuela. In 1963, Franco himself left for northern Italy, and his daughter has now settled in Australia. Franco returned to Sambuca three years ago. “I was struck by the deserted roads and by the silence where once the voices of thousands of people echoed in the squares,” he says. “Sambuca, my Sambuca, now seemed a cemetery for the living dead.”

In an attempt to resuscitate the town, the mayor, Leo Ciaccio, and his deputy, Cacioppo, have adopted a strategy that has become fashionable in the south: sell, or practically give away, abandoned homes to anyone who wants to move in. Other towns have attempted the same thing, including Gangi in northern Sicily, Salemi in the west near Marsala, and Ollolai in Sardinia. The symbolic price of a home: a euro. (Another approach is to facilitate the turning of abandoned homes into “scattered hotels”.)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Visitors from London outside Sambuca’s Chiesa Madres Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Observer

“Some people think that’s all it takes – the cost of a cup of coffee,” says Cacioppo. “They’re wrong. It’s an auction that starts at one euro. If those who participate do not bid higher, then yes, the house will be sold for the price of a croissant.”

Currently there are 17 council-owned homes for sale in Sambuca. Another 15 will soon be added. Another 400 privately owned homes may yet come up for sale because they have been abandoned. The majority of the dwellings date from the mid-1800s; many of them were damaged in the earthquake and abandoned immediately after. They are homes where time stands still. In one two-storey house, which once belonged to a local carabinieri officer, a calendar on the wall is turned to July 1967.

Some visitors leave the homes unimpressed. Others are smiling. “There is much potential in these homes,” says Nick, a 46-year-old property developer from London who did not want his surname to be published. He was in Kiev airport, waiting to board a flight to London, when he read an article about the sale of homes for a euro in a delightful Sicilian town. “I didn’t think twice. I winked at my wife and she agreed. We left the boarding queue for London and ran to the first ticket counter to purchase a flight to Palermo.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sambuca, seen here at sunrise, sits on a hill above the Belice valley about an hour from Palermo. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Observer

Polish couple Urszula and Maciej Kuziemska couldn’t resist either. They now live in Boston, and came to Sambuca in the hope of buying a romantic pied-à-terre away from the big city. Samar Choudhuri, another property developer, came from Panama to propose buying several homes in Sambuca for a group of investors. Caroline O’Hare, a British lawyer, arrived from Dubai, and Ammar Alansari came from the United Arab Emirates. He says he was bewitched by Sicily’s Arab architecture and culture.

Franco Lo Vecchio looks at them with curiosity. The people of Sambuca have largely embraced the mayor’s plan, seeing it as a courageous act – a last-ditch effort to bring Sambuca back from its terminal illness.

But not everyone is hopeful. Some believe there’s no way Sambuca can be saved from the decline history has reserved for small towns in southern Italy. Caterina, 50, is one. She regrets having returned to Sicily from Switzerland three years ago, leaving a job where she earned about £2,700 a month. Standing in front of her cafe on the deserted Corso Umberto, she lights a cigarette and contemplates the streets of Sambuca. “I still don’t know why I came back to work in a deserted bar where I’m forced to close two hours early because the place is totally empty. Will houses on sale for a euro help this town? I wouldn’t be so sure …”

While potential buyers seek shelter from the rain, the restoration of the Chiesa Madre continues. For the first time since the earthquake the church reopened last week, just in time for the new visitors to admire it. It is a fitting metaphor for Sambuca: a town that after 50 years refuses to disappear and will do anything it takes to survive, even if it means selling its homes for the price of a coffee.