You can rent this whole Italian village for your party

And no, Petritoli is not abandoned. Plus, your jaw will drop at how affordable it actually is

If you still haven’t made any New Year’s Eve party plans and you happen to have such a large group of friends that no venue could possibly hold you, then why not just rent an entire medieval Italian hilltop village? Though this may sound like a misleading ad, the reality is that Petritoli, one of Italy’s certified “most beautiful towns” is offered to tourists as a package accommodation, replete with its own attractions and experiences.

That means, in order to spend a night or two as a guest in Le Marche region town you need to bring a group of a minimum of 40 people, who will be placed in different rooms spread around the village. These include charming B&Bs, long-established traditional hotels as well as Old World Palazzo settings sleeping, 70 people.

Petritoli actually has the capacity to accommodate up to 210 people and it can all be booked in one easy swoop for one set price. The crazy thing is that the price stays constant no matter the season, and it is set at 1500 euros per night (according to the booking website Vrbo).

That’s not per person, but per group. In other words, if you actually happen to have a party of 210 people itching to go somewhere, that works out to about 7.14 euros per person!

The village of weddings

Petritoli, located not far from the Adriatic coast, has been named the Village of Weddings. Indeed, that was the kind of industry that it has chosen to specialize in as a way of gaining some recognition on an Italian tourism market that is saturated with plentiful charming destinations.

The region of Le Marche might not be as known as Tuscany or Sicily, but that might just well be its best selling point. It holds just as many charming medieval towns that can provide the ideal cinematic backdrop to an Italian vacation, plus a visitor could feel like a pioneer.

You would be excused for thinking that perhaps the village has suffered from the effect of rural depopulation to the point of rendering it a ghost locality. And you would be mistaken, for it is quite thriving with 2,500 residents.

“It all started almost by chance thanks to some tour operators from northern Europe, residing in Petritoli, who after the wedding of a young German couple publicized the event and the place even beyond national borders,” Luca Tomassini (the mayor at the time) told Corriere della Serra back in 2012.

Since weddings are the kind of event that can be a logistical nightmare, bringing a lot of guests to one spot, the villagers decided to cooperate together as a team and to promote the entire locality as a package rather than the individual hospitality businesses separately. After all, they’re not rivals and each restaurant, theatre and hotel adds to the overall experience that the guests can enjoy.

Wedding season, however, tends to be mostly focused in the summertime, so now there is the option to just book the village for other events during the rest of the year as well. What the organizers say is that this is where you can find the “True Italy” – a place where you can sense the true vibe of rural life, where menus in restaurants are not bilingual and where there are no tourist traps.