In the 1980s fewer than ten people still lived here. They spoke a language most Italians don't. They decided that was worth keeping.
By the 1980s fewer than ten people still lived in Ostana, all of them old. A century earlier there had been more than a thousand. From 1985 the village rebuilt its stone houses and made the Occitan language the thing it organised itself around.
It worked. The average age is now around thirty-seven. A bakery opened in 2019. There is a doctor's post and a tiny school. The stated goal is one hundred residents.
Turin (TRN). The municipality gives the distance as seventy-five kilometres from Turin, roughly two hours. No train reaches the village.
Seventy-eight residents means seventy-eight residents. Book months ahead. One bakery, no supermarket. The road up is steep and winter can require chains. There is nothing to do here except walk and talk.
Sources: tuttitalia.it/piemonte/64-ostana/ ; comune.ostana.cn.it/contatti/come-raggiungere-ostana
Each town is a day. The order of the drives, the nights and the meals is the part that ruins most first trips to small Italy. Twelve of them in one guide, free, and a letter a week after that.
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