The beautiful ancient village frozen in time named Italy’s ‘best place to visit’

The sits nestled in the mountains of rural Sicily.

Boasting a rich cultural history, it was named ‘Il Borgo dei Borghi’ (the village of villages) by the Italian government after its mayor introduced a in 2014, with the annual competition shining a light on the best place to visit in the country.

But despite the accolade, Gangi hasn’t benefited from tourism in the way other coastal towns and villages in the country has – with the village’s population dropping by 10,000 in the late 20th century, mostly caused by an exodus of young and ambitious young people moving to metropolitan areas like nearby central Palermo.

It was this trend that spurred then-mayor Giueseppe Ferrarello to introduce the One Euro Houses program, offering buyers the chance to renovate dilapidated properties at their own expense. The inventive scheme was replicated in other settlements and helped to boost Gangi’s tourist trade, partly through its widespread publicity.

The pretty village also annually draws visitors for its large-scale living nativity, staged each December in its centre. A theatrical journey that takes onlookers on a journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem courtesy of around 200 actors, it was first held in 2008 and has grown in scale and variety each year since.

The village’s steep geology, climbing 1,000 metres above sea level, also offers jaw-dropping views of Mount Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe.

Gangi hasn’t always been a quiet idyll of winding backstreets and grand frontages, however. In fact, it was once a notorious mafia hotspot and has gone down in history as the site of the Siege of Gangi in 1926. This saw fascist prefect and former policeman Cesare Mori occupy the town and order door-to-door searches to flush all the mobsters out.

While it was a success, many mafia members fled from Sicily to the US and Argentina, leading to a rise of organised crime in these regions.

It’s worth a visit for these reasons as well as its plentiful cultural attractions – with a plaque in the village piazza paying tribute to ‘victims of the mafia’ – and gastronomical calendar highlights including the Memorie e Tradizioni, an opportunity for local tradespeople to showcase their wares.

As you might expect from an Italian hamlet, it also has a wide range of traditional food, with the classic pizza and pasta accompanied by calzones, rotisserie, arancini and mastacuttè biscuits, made from flour, sugar and prickly pear juice.

An out-of-season trip might not offer the vast architecture of Rome, rugged grottos of the Amalfi Coast or Milan’s flashy retail scene, but, as travel blogger Mary Murphy wrote of her 2020 visit, it does “feel a little like being on top of the world”.