After a Ligurian hilltop village was destroyed by an earthquake, a group of artists rebuilt from the ruins. Now residents of this popular tourist attraction are facing eviction. I'm standing outside the puppet maker's house in the Italian medieval village of Bussana Vecchia .
It's raining, and the narrow street is utterly silent, the cobblestones glinting in the yellow light emanating from the glass door in front of me. The door opens, and Nina Franco beams at me. "Come in! Come in!" She's dressed in paint-spotted blue workman's overalls and a scarf is tied over her hair.
Inside this space, which doubles as her workshop, felt hand-puppets and varnished wooden marionettes spill out of wooden crates and hang from nets attached to the ceiling, crowded next to miniature theatres and commedia dell'arte characters. Peeking past Franco, I can see that the back of the building is still a work in progress, with piles of rocks in lieu of a kitchen floor. She sees my gaze and laughs: "I'm still building! Everyone in this village at some point or other has had to build their own house.
" Franco is one of Bussana Vecchia's newest residents. She arrived in 2022 after spending 20 years living in Argentina and joined the village's eclectic community of international artists. "It's a real tower of Babel.
If you close your eyes, you can hear French, German, Russian, Spanish – all from people who live here," she tells me over tea as we sit on a rug on her floor and talk about the village's his.
