It’s a plan which, if their counterparts across the whole of Italy go along with it, would not only give Italian children their own paradise to hang out in, but would save the govement €3 million.

Children from the middle school in Mosso, a small town in the Alpine province of Biella, have started a crowdfunding campaign to buy the uninhabited Budelli, part of the idyllic Maddalena archipelago which lies between Sardinia and Corsica, La Stampa reported.

They say that if every Italian child pitches in €0.50 then they could club together to buy the island, which they would name ‘isola dei ragazzi’ (the children’s island).

The savvy youngsters have already managed to pool €75 between the town’s 1,500 residents.

“It seems small, but it’s a first step,” they said.

“The message we want to convey is this: if all Italian school pupils donate €0.50 each we could raise the €3 million needed to win the next auction, which means this piece of heritage won’t fall into the hands of a stranger.”

The island, famous for its pink sandy beach and considered the most beautiful in the Mediterranean, was almost taken over by Michael Harte, a banker from New Zealand who paid €2.94 million when it was put up for auction in 2013.

The children campaigning to buy Budelli. Photo: ‘Non si s-Budelli l’Italia’ Facebook page.

Harte, said to have been in love with the archipelago for years, had carefully drawn up conservation plans to ensure its ecosystem was protected.

But needless to say, his offer drew protest by local politicians, who appealed to the govement to bring the paradise, whose previous owner had gone bankrupt, back under state control.

A court in Sardinia overtued a ruling allowing the sale in 2014, and the govement then passed a law that enabled the state to buy it back.

The govement reimbursed Harte but he successfully appealed, and in October last year Italy’s National Park Authority was told to hand the island back to him, while giving him 60 days to pay his original offer price.

But according to a report in La Nuova Sardegna on Saturday, Harte has since renounced his dream.

The newspaper cited a letter from his lawyer, Luca Montella, who said that the uncertainty surrounding the island’s classification as a reserve, coupled with persistent opposition, forced the entrepreneur to walk away.

Photo: Who wouldn't want this? Photo: Christopher Sammer

The idea for the school campaign came about on Monday, when a teacher asked the pupils to read the news in La Stampa’s Sunday issue for discussion as opposed to a book.

They picked up on the story about Budelli, prompting a conversation about its rich history and what fate might befall it.

“We read about the businessman trying to buy it and at the point we thought ‘we could make the dream of maintaining it in public hands a reality’,” student Francesca Grillo told La Stampa.

The group quickly formed a group and set about doing the calculations, before taking the campaign, called ‘Non si s-Budelli l’Italia’ to social media.

The girl was visiting the bank with her mother but became bored and crawled away while her mum was talking with the cashier, Il Messaggero reported.

The mischievous tot clambered into an open time-lock safe that was kept on the bank floor, shutting the door behind her.

Unfortunately for the child, the safe was set to lock itself automatically and, once closed, could not be opened for 40 minutes.

As soon as the girl's mother realized what had happened, panicked bank staff called the fire brigade to try to free the child as quickly as possible.

With the help of a hydraulic wedge, the firemen managed to force the door of the safe open in less than 15 minutes, freeing the crying - but otherwise unhurt - child.

A video of the operation can be seen below.

Whatever you make of the decision, one thing is for certain: Italy's 7,600-kilometer coastline is awash with picturesque towns and beautiful beaches.

The gallery below shows ten of the most beautiful places you can visit where you're guaranteed to avoid maddening throngs of tourists - and no advanced booking required!

In Pictures: Beautiful seaside towns where tourists don't tread

Police seized hundreds of kilograms of drugs including marijuana from Albania, cocaine from Romania and hashish from Spain, all destined to be peddled in the south of the country by the powerful 'Ndrangheta organisation.

Prosecutor Alessandra Dolci said that the immensely wealthy group, credited with controlling much of the world's cocaine trade, was thriving because "sadly in very few cases the victims denounce its presence in the north".

Police commander Canio Giuseppe La Gala in Milan joined Dolci in calling on "citizens to collaborate and help us by informing, so that the anti-mafia pool in Milan can immediately investigate and destroy the phenomenon".

Of those arrested, 11 are accused of belonging to the 'Ndrangheta, with some having already spent years behind bars after being locked up in the 1990s under Italy's notoriously strict mafia prison regime.

As well as drug trafficking, the suspects are accused of extortion, usury and armed robbery.

Police said they busted the gang thanks to information provided by a businessman from Calabria who had initially thought to make a deal with the 'Ndrangheta when the crime group first attempted to illicit protection money from him.

"The testimony from Francomao, the businessman, is very rare. His story shows that making deals with members of organised crime, with the hope of profiting, ends instead with being slowly swallowed up by the system," Dolci said.

"In his case, he had decided to accept as a minority shareholder a convict who, from the inside and with mafia methods, managed to gnaw away at his company," finally forcing him to sell for next to nothing, she said.

Over 140 people were ordered to stand trial at the end of last year for helping the group infiltrate the affluent north, including gangster bosses, businessmen and an ex-footballer who played for Italy when it won the World Cup in 2006.

Police believe the group - which they describe as the most active, richest and most powerful syndicate in Europe - uses legitimate activities in the north to recycle the huge amounts of cash their drugs business generates.

The anti-establishment party had promised Prime Minister Matteo Renzi it would support the bill legalising gay relationships.

But in an unexpected about-tu, this week it refused to green-light a motion to speed up the draft law's adoption, opening the door to a series of wrecking amendments by opponents.

Enraged grassroots supporters accused the party known as M5S of betraying their wishes in order to spite Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party (PD).

"The civil union bill was an unmissable moment to put Renzi in difficulty," Franco Pavoncello, political science professor at John Cabot University in Rome, told AFP, though he waed the M5S could face "fallout" over the perceived betrayal.

Italy is the last major country in Weste Europe not to offer gay civil unions. Close ties with the Vatican have sunk all previous attempts. This time the bill has met more fierce Catholic opposition over its allowing gay couples to adopt under certain circumstances.

M5S, founded in 2009 by Italy's famous acerbic comic Beppe Grillo, celebrated a shock success in the 2013 general election when it snapped up 25.5 percent of the vote, becoming the second biggest political force behind the PD.

Grillo, 67, aounced last year that he was taking his bushy beard and trademark rants back to showbiz. His name has gone from the Five Star logo and he brought a new stand-up routine to Rome this week.

'Jackals, traitors, cowards'

His sharp-suited heir apparent, Luigi Di Maio, 29, defended M5S's political move on Twitter, saying it was protecting parliamentary debate - a line which sparked catcalls from Inteet users who branded the party "jackals", "traitors" and "cowards".

Gay rights groups were also furious, with protesters holding a sit-in outside Grillo's show in the Italian capital.

"It was a tactical move against the PD, but they (M5S) also want to arrive at the local elections without angering the right", where votes are up for grabs, said Francesco Maesano, Five Star expert for La Stampa daily.

Political commentator Andrea Scanzi described the move as "cutting off your balls to spite your wife".

"If they vote for the bill they clash with half of their electorate. If they don't vote for it they make the country miss a great chance to be less bigoted," he said in Il Fatto Quotidiano.

Guido Moltedo, founder of online political magazine Ytali, told AFP the movement was "just like the scorpion in the fable" where he stings and kills the frog carrying him across a river because, despite his promises, he caot help himself.

The party, bo as a protest group, won votes from across the political spectrum with its platform against corruption and in favour of a euro-membership referendum - and refuses to make pacts with parties on the right or left.

Need to choose sides

The party's premise was that decisions should emerge from an egalitarian exchange of ideas by members on the Inteet, but in fact the movement's "guru" Gianroberto Casaleggio dictates the party line, experts say.

The movement has expelled anyone who would broker deals, hampering its own attempts to secure significant policy results in parliament.

"How long can they remain without choosing sides on key issues? I don't think very long. What they are doing (over civil unions) is very dangerous and they risk losing swathes of voters," Moltedo said.

Piergiorgio Corbetta, research director at Bologna's Cattaneo Institute and author of a book on M5S, said Grillo's dream of "direct democracy" had "proved an unattainable utopia", and the party would struggle without him.

"The Five Star movement is a child of Grillo, his personality and communication skills. It's likely to slip into a rapid decline. We've seen it here, it's listing," he said.

A poll by the Euromedia Institute this week showed the movement still has 24.5 percent of voter intentions but is slowly losing ground to Renzi's PD, which currently stands at 32 percent.

Its strength will be tested this year at local elections in Rome, though many have waed wiing the mayorship could be a poisoned chalice, given scandal-hit Rome's problems.

"I hope for their sake they don't win, or they'll find themselves with an unmanageable hot potato," Corbetta said.

Two-thirds of South Carolinians are Protestants, with evangelical voters comprising the largest voting block in the state during its Republican primary, which is being held on Saturday.

The evangelical faithful are often suspicious of hierarchical authority, and a Pew Institute study in January said liberal Americans have a more favorable view of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church than conservatives.

This could serve in Trump's favor when it comes to the spat between him and the pontiff, who triggered the controversy when he said the billionaire real estate mogul is "not a Christian" because he wants to build a wall on the US southe border to keep out illegal immigrants.

The remarks led to a torrent of media coverage, even as Francis cautioned his statement by saying he still wanted to see if Trump had made such Idea and would "give him the benefit of the doubt."

Trump's response was swift, ste and par for the course for his campaign, in which he has refused to let a criticism go unchallenged.

"For a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful," Trump said in a statement that he read to a campaign crowd in Kiawah Island, South Carolina.

Was Trump's biting response a ploy to gain evangelical support some 48 hours before the critical primary?

"I don't do it for that reason," he told Fox News.

"With me, I just tell the truth," he added, stressing that "we need borders, we have to stop illegal immigration. It's killing our country."

A Trump surrogate wasted no time in pointing out the apparent hypocrisy in slamming Trump for wanting to build a wall.

"Amazing Idea from the Pope - considering Vatican City is 100% surrounded by massive walls," Dan Scavino, Trump's director of social media, posted on Twitter.

Careful criticism

The bombshell back-and-forth dominated the campaign Thursday, with rivals Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio wading in carefully to suggest the pope's advice was not entirely welcome.

"I don't question anybody's Christianity because I honestly believe that's a relationship you have with your creator," Bush told reporters.

"It only enabled bad behavior when someone from outside our country talks about Donald Trump."

Bush is Catholic, as is fellow Floridian Rubio, and they appeared to send the gentle message that Francis, who had just completed a visit to Mexico, should stick to his role as a religious leader.

"I think the Holy Father recognizes or should recognize - and I believe he does - how generous America is," Rubio said.

"When it comes to accepting both refugees and immigrants, no nation on this planet is more welcoming, more open or more compassionate than the United States," Rubio added.

"Certainly a lot more welcoming in our laws than Mexico is."

In his historic speech before the US Congress last year, the pope urged US lawmakers to mobilize against climate change, take in more refugees and abolish the death penalty - positions opposed by many Republicans.

Religious figures rushed to Francis's defense.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue told CNN he felt Francis was "set up" by a reporter asking about Trump.

"I'll give him the benefit of the doubt," Donohue said of the pope's remarks.

Father Timothy Kesicki, president of the Jesuit Conference, said the pope was reacting less to Trump himself and more to the gospel's opposition to building barriers.

"I think he's attacking an issue more than a person," Kesicki said on CNN.

The ultimate question is whether South Carolina's evangelicals line up behind Trump on Saturday.

Senator Ted Cruz narrowly captured Iowa, the first state to vote in the nomination battle, thanks to evangelicals.

Reverend Don Flowers of Providence Baptist Church in Charleston told AFP he was "not convinced this year there is going to be an evangelical bloc of voters going to one candidate."

That could spell a clear victory for Trump if he neutralizes Cruz's advantage with religious voters.

At the nearby St. Matthew's German Evangelical Lutheran Church, Pastor James Blalock suggested Trump's remarks might have been out of line.

"The pope has better credentials to comment about what is Christian and what is not than Donald Trump," Blalock said.

The fireball left a trail of vapour hanging in the sky for minutes.

Not long after the unusual event, pictures of bright flashes, vapour trails and eyewitness reports started to emerge on social media, with users suggesting they had witnessed a meteorite falling to earth.

The unidentified flying object lit up skies over northe Italy, travelling east to west from Genoa to Venice at around 6.19pm.

Sightings of the object were also reported from as far away as southe France and Switzerland.

La Repubblica reported a spike in phone calls made to Italy's fire brigade to report the phenomenon.

A photo of the vapour trail, captured on a road outside Genoa, was uploaded to the Italian citizen joualism website, YouReporter.

The trail over liguria. Photo: YouReporter

“The object crossed the sky for about four seconds – I've never seen anything like it," the user, called Masdives, wrote. "This is a picture of the contrail I took, which was in the sky for about a minute.”

Moments later a similar object was seen hurtling over the skies of Venice almost 400 kilometers further east.

Angelo 1960 uploaded a photo snapped above town of Jesolo, showing a bright flaming object streaking through the sky.

“I saw it coming down rapidly, followed by a trail of smoke and fire," he wrote.

The meteorite snapped over Venice. Photo: YouReporter

Sightings of the object were not limited to Italy, with reports also emerging from as far away as southe France and Switzerland.

Twitter user Romain Magellan uploaded a pic of the object snapped above the ski resort of Valmorel in France.

Reports of Thursday's UFO are consistent with descriptions of a bolide – a small piece of rock or ice from outer space that bu up as they race through the earths atmosphere before hitting the ground.

Bolides are extremely bright objects – often with apparent magnitudes much brighter than the full moon.

According to American space agency Nasa, some 100 tons of dust, gravel, rock and ice enter the earth's atmosphere every day.

La Stampa reported that the Sardinia-based carrier has asked unions to agree to the job cuts as part of the partnership deal with the Gulf airline.

It was reported earlier this week that the deal could see Qatar Airways, ranked the best airline in the world in 2015, taking a minority stake of up to 49 percent in Meridiana.

A deal is expected to be reached during the first half of 2016.

Meridiana is owned by Aga Khan, a businessman and Muslim spiritual leader who invested heavily in developing Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda coastline in the 1960s, tuing Porto Cervo into a billionaires' paradise.

The job cuts would be another blow for Italy’s travel sector, especially after the Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair said earlier this month that it would axe 600 jobs in Italy as a result of a hike in taxes.

Italy’s unemployment rate also crept up again in December to 11.4 percent after a steady decline over four consecutive months.

Alitalia also laid off thousands of staff in 2014 as a result of its merger with Abu Dhabi’s Etihad.

Sting has certainly been making the most of his Tuscan estate, Tenuta Il Paglio, which he bought from an Italian duke in 1998 for €3.5 million.

Back then it was just a dilapidated villa with 100 hectares of land.

But alongside wife Trudy Styler, the Englishman in Tuscany set about restoring the property, going on to acquire more land surrounding the villa at auction in 2003, for €6 million, with the aim of producing wine.

Over a decade on, one of the four wines produced at the estate - Sister Moon, named after one of his songs - has been placed on an exclusive list of Italy's best wine, compiled by Wine Spectator, an American magazine.

According to Corriere della Sera, the inclusion means the wine will be on show, alongside those produced by the more established Frescobaldi and Marchesi Antinori, at the prestigious OperaWine, which takes place in Verona in April.

When contacted by The Local, Sting's press team weren't immediately available for comment.

OperaWine is the first event of the long-ruing Vinitaly wine festival, which has been celebrating the best bottles Italy has to offer for 50 years.

Made from 40 percent Sangiovese grapes, 40 percent Merlot and 20 percent Cabeet Sauvignon, Sister Moon was the first wine produced on the artist's Tuscan estate in 2007.

But it doesn't come cheap: bottles of the 2008 vintage sell for €36.

A description of the wine on the estate's website boasts "aromas of black pepper and black licorice with blackberries". The wine also "fills your mouth and then caresses your taste buds".

Sting and his wife spend months each year at the property with their six children - often entertaining high-profile guests.

UK Prime Ministers David Cameron and Tony Blair have been spotted relaxing on the estate alongside American singers Madoa and Bruce Springsteen.

Sister Moon is also produced alongside three other reds, two of which are named after his hits: Message In A Bottle, When We Dance and Casino Delle Vie.

Olive oil and honey are also produced at the estate, which has recently opened its doors to tourists.

Six cottages can be let in the grounds of the villa and the artist has been known to entertain his guests with an impromptu acoustic set. But the experience doesn't come cheap – seven days costs €7,000.

A probe was launched into Bilal Erdogan after Italian authorities were petitioned by Turkish businessman Murat Hakan Uzan - an exiled political opponent of Erdogan - to investigate a purported "getaway operation" from Turkey to Italy.

Erdogan's son moved to Bologna in August to complete his doctoral studies, but was accused by anti-govement parties of fleeing his homeland after being implicated in a corruption scandal.

Bilal, who lives in the north Italian city with his wife and two children, insisted he was merely winding up his PhD in inteational relations at the School of Advanced Inteational Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

The 35-year old was one of the main protagonists implicated in corruption allegations that exploded in December 2013 against the president's ier circle and were bitterly denied by Erdogan, then premier.

Leaked tapes emerged in February 2014 of Erdogan allegedly telling Bilal to dispose of some €30 million ($37 million) in cash.

Erdogan has dismissed the recordings as a "vile montage".

Uzan's petition stated that Bilal flew into Italy with a "large sum of money" and a team of armed bodyguards who were denied entry before swiftly being assigned Turkish diplomatic passports, according to Italian media reports.

Matteo Marzotto, his sister Diamante and businessman Massimo Caputi were given nominal ten-month prison sentences by a court in Milan for evading a €70 million tax bill on the family's 2007 sale of the Valentino fashion house to investment fund Permira.

The sale was organised through a company based in Luxembourg but should have been liable for Italian taxes, the judge in the case ruled.

None of those convicted will go to jail immediately, pending up to two appeals against the sentences.

Marzotto specialises in producing high-quality wool, cotton, linen and silk-based textiles for Italy's luxury and fashion sectors. Valentino now belongs to a Qatari investment fund which took over Permira.

The ingenious idea was to transform their portable vaporizers into 'e-joints', which they then loaded up with marijuana and hid inside marker pens so they could have a smoke on the sly during breaks.

But staff at Colombatto, a vocational school for tourism and hotel management, were well aware that drug-taking was rife in the institute thanks to the students' often brazen attitude towards consumption.

"A teacher told me he saw a boy waving a bag of drugs around in class, presenting it to his friends as as if it was a brioche,” The school's headmistress, Claudia Torta, told Il Messaggero.

“At that point, I decided that enough was enough.”

As well as police finding the e-joints during their investigation, plants, seeds and greenhouses were seized from the homes of several students.

The raids also exposed a network of juvenile drug dealers from Vaie, a small town just outside Turin in the Susa Valley, who were selling drugs both at school and at their local train station.

Ten students were charged with drug trafficking and selling drugs to minors, while two were placed under house arrest and another two are forced to report daily to their local police station.

“Drug dealing at school is a phenomenon that should be eliminated,” public prosecutor Aamaria Baldelli said.

“Outside of the family, school is our most important agent in human education.”

But at a glitzy and detailed presentation of their official candidacy in Rome on Wednesday, bid candidacy president Luca Di Montezemolo admitted that keeping a watchful eye on their spending budget would be among their priorities.

"The building blocks of our project are total transparency, a 'low-cost'
approach and bringing general improvement to the city," said Di Montezemolo.

With the Colosseum as their emblem and the city's major tourist attractions as venues, Rome intends to build on its strengths and existing infrastructure to avoid, like its rivals, uecessary and unpopular costs.

Di Montezemolo, the former Ferrari chief, claims 70 percent of the facilities required to host events around Rome, which hosted the 1960 Games, are already in place.

In a bid to avoid constructing "white elephant" stadiums or venues, the construction of temporary venues is in the pipeline.

"More than 70 percent of the sites are already available. If we had to organise the opening ceremony tomorrow, as well as the athletics and swimming events, we could," said Di Montezemolo.

The race to host the 2024 Olympics began in eaest Wednesday with the four bid cities - Budapest, Los Angeles, Paris and Rome - all presenting their initial candidature files to the Inteational Olympic Committee (IOC).

Rome believes the stuing backdrop of some of its famous historical sites offers competitors, spectators and millions of viewers around the the chance to take a unique trip back in time.

Athletes would step up to receive their medals in front of the Colosseum, the cycling road races would be held around the ancient sites of the Fori Imperiali and archery events would be held at the Baths of Caracalla.

The marathon races would pass by St. Peter's Basilica, a synagogue and a mosque and the Circus Maximus - in antiquity, the venue that hosted brutal chariot races.

A Rome Olympics would be held around three key centres: the Foro Italico, built in the 1920s and completed, notably the Stadio Olimpico, ahead of the 1960 Games, the Fiera di Roma and Tor Vergata, which would host the Olympic Village.

Di Montezemolo said their budget for permanent venues (principally the Olympic Village and the press centre), would rise to €2.1 billion.

"It's our plan to build temporary venues. We don't want to be left with any white elephants," he said.

At least that's according to a report by the UK-based business adviser, Willis Towers Watson.

The 2016 Global 50 Remuneration Plaing Report ranked the average salaries paid for full-time, entry-level jobs - those usually aimed at recent graduates or people who have recently finished specific training courses.

Among the 15 weste European nations ranked, Italy came last – paying an average gross salary of €27,400 a year.

The figure marks a stark contrast with Switzerland, which ranked in first place, paying an average pre-tax salary of a whopping €83,600.

Italy's closest counterparts were Spain, where entry-level workers can expect to take home €30,700, and France, where average eaings were slightly better at €33,400.

After the Swiss, the Danes were the next most handsomely paid – taking home an average of €51,400 a year. Germany and Norway came fourth and fifth, respectively, with average salaries of €45,800 and €45,800 a year.

Italy's inability to pay its young workers competitive wages is one of the key factors driving the 'brain-drain'.

Every year thousands of skilled Italians leave the country, enticed by the higher wages and better opportunities on offer abroad.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Those who stay – and manage to find a job - see their eaings increase considerably as their career progresses, according to the report.

In terms of net salaries paid to workers in middle-management positions, Italy was ranked a more respectable 11th place out of the 15 countries – with average gross salaries of €70,900 per year.

That's higher than wages paid for similar roles in northe European powerhouses Sweden (€68,300) and Finland (€64,100).

It's been a bleak start to the year for Italy's economy, despite Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s rapid reform efforts and a glimmer of hope in the middle of last year.

The only good news has been that consumer confidence reached a record high in January, although business confidence was at its lowest in almost a year.

Some might argue that Italy, often dismissed as a basket case, has always been listless and that a crash is a foregone conclusion.

When the country somewhat blindly sailed into the euro in 2000, the cost of living almost doubled oveight, as salaries stagnated.

But back then there were at least more jobs and bank credit was easier to come by.

The global financial meltdown of 2008 changed all of that, with Italy's economy limping along ever since. In fact, the size of the Italian economy is roughly where it was over a decade ago.

Bankrupt Greece might have stolen the limelight over the past few years, but Italy, Europe’s third-largest economy and the world’s eighth largest, has been closely watched.

And even more so now as the country teeters on the edge of a banking crisis and conce mounts that it could now go the way of its southe European neighbour.

And if Italy goes the way of Greece, the impact will be monumental, not just for Europe, but the entire world economy.

Here are five reasons why Italy is making the world jittery.

1. Banking crisis - depositors starting to pull their money out

Photo: Fabio Muzzi/AFP

Banks across Europe aren’t in healthy state right now, but in Italy, the situation is far worse.

The number of “bad loans” - that is the number of loans that are not being paid back as per the agreement between the borrower and lender - held by Italian banks amounted to €200 billion at the end of December.

That figure that has been growing since 2008 and amounts to a dizzying 17 percent of GDP.

Italy’s major banks and corporations are starting to feel the pain, with stocks in Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Banca Carige, Unicredit and Fiat falling dramatically in mid-January.

The problem is, because of new EU rules, Italy can’t bail-out its banks, while an attempt to create a “bad bank” last year to relieve the Italian banking system of some of these toxic loans flouted state-aid rules.

This is why Renzi’s patience with the EU over the past few weeks has been wearing thin - he is constrained by EU regulations to fix the problem, but the EU, with its austerity policy, won’t fix it either.

But what does this mean for you?

Firstly, it means that the more bad loans a bank has on its books, the less they have to lend to you and, crucially, to businesses that want to grow.

People are also starting to wonder how safe their money is in Italian banks.

Fabrizio Viola, the CEO of Monte dei Paschi, Italy’s third-biggest bank and the most troubled one, admitted in January that some customers had started to pull their savings out of the bank.

Although Renzi moved to reassure people that the country’s banking system is robust, the market volatility no doubt spooked depositors - especially with the suicide of an Italian pensioner, who lost his entire savings as a result of the “bail-in” of the four smaller banks in December - still fresh in their minds.

That said, some moves have been made to soothe the jitters.

Italy has managed to strike a deal with the European Commission to help its banks sell their non-performing loans. Although analysts have waed that the deal wouldn’t fully solve the problem, it will significantly reduce potential losses.

The other positive news, according to analysts at Fitch ratings agency, is that Italian banks, despite the huge amount of bad loans, appear to have “adequate solvency”, at least enough to avert total collapse.

2. The two trillion euro question

Matteo Renzi. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

Italy is drowning in public debt. The figure stood at almost €2.2 trillion at the end of December - €38 billion higher than at the end of 2014.

That’s the second highest in the EU, after Greece.

So unless Renzi wins more concessions from the EU, he will struggle to reduce that debt pile over the next year.

Here’s why: Italy’s recovery from recession has virtually stalled, and growth forecasts of 1.6 percent for this year are begiing to look unachievable.

Italy also just doesn’t get enough back in tax revenues - even though tax rates are among Europe's highest - to help alleviate the debt.

And the EU simply doesn’t have the money to rescue Italy in the way it did Greece.

3. Lack of productivity

Photo: Dan Strange

Italy has a dismal record when it comes to productivity - that means the amount of value a worker creates over time; a crucial element of a thriving economy.

Italian workers might be clocking longer hours, but they’ve been producing less for over a decade.

This wasn’t always the case. Back in the 1970s, Italy thrived when it came to production.

But that growth fell rapidly thanks to low investment, a low-quality workforce and lousy goveance in the decades that followed.

It doesn’t help that the labour market is still so highly regulated and the country still so heavily unionized.

The cumbersome and costly bureaucracy also prevents producers from actually producing.

The extent of Italy’s dismal productivity came to the fore more recently through the embarrassing exposés on the hundreds of public sector staff who’ve been shirking work to indulge in more appealing pursuits. All the while being paid.

Meanwhile, industrial production fell in November and December and manufacturing output eased in January.

Italy is also a country made up mostly of family-run, small or medium-sized businesses, which lack the funding to help them grow and make them more competitive.

4. High unemployment

Photo: AFP

The abysmal rate of production has resulted in high unemployment, especially among Italy’s youth - i.e., the segment that is meant to be propping up the pension payments for Italy’s ageing population.

Leaders may have patted themselves on the backs when the jobless rate fell steadily over a four month period towards the end of last year, but it crept up again to 11.4 percent in December.

Youth unemployment might have fallen during the same month - most likely due to young people fleeing the country for work rather than jobs being created - but it was still at a very high 37.9 percent.

The situation is more acute in Italy’s southe regions, where the economy is even worse than that of Greece’s.

The south's gross domestic product declined for the seventh year in a row in 2014, while its economic output grew by just 13 percent between 2001 and 2014.

Such figures paint a picture of an ever-widening wealth gap between Italy's north and south, with one in three people at risk of poverty in the south, compared to one in 10 in the north.

A dwindling population is also hindering chances of a southe revival: in 2014, just 174,000 births were registered in the south - the lowest in 150 years.

Meanwhile, young people are fleeing in their droves, sick at the slow pace of change and lack of opportunities, something which threatens to tu many small southe Italian cities into ghost-towns.

5 - An ageing population

Photo: Caspar Diederik

Regulation, a shortage of jobs and an ageing population all play into the hands of Italy’s main economic killer: weak production.

Italy’s birth rate has more than halved since the ‘baby boom’ of the 1960s, with the number of babies now being bo averaging about 500,000 a year.

A lack of jobs and money is preventing young people from leaving home and starting a family, while little has been done by the govement to encourage people to have children.

Italians are also living longer, thus depending more on pensions, but with no jobs for the young people whose taxes are expected to fund them.

The Italian composer was allegedly so jealous of the Austrian prodigy that he once tried to poison him - a claim rejected by experts as the collaboration was performed in Prague.

"The part composed by Mozart is, shall we say, more ingenious and dramatic, while the other two verses are more lyrical," musician Lukas Vendl told reporters after playing the four-minute composition on a harpsichord.

"But it's impossible to deduce from it who was a better composer."

The cantata from 1785 is "key to a new understanding of the relationship between Mozart and Salieri," according to Timo Jouko Herrma, the German musicologist and composer who found the work.

Herrma said it suggests the men were "colleagues who worked together" rather than rivals and undermines a legend suggesting Salieri may have played a role in Mozart's untimely death at 36 in 1791.

Titled "Per la ricuperata salute di Offelia" (To Ophelia's health) the cantata was jointly composed by Mozart, Salieri and an unknown musician named Coetti.

It accompanies a libretto by Italian poet Lorenzo Da Ponte and is dedicated to popular English soprano Nancy Storace (1765-1817), who retued to the stage after losing her voice for a spell.

The score lay unidentified in the Czech Museum of Music since the 1950s but Herrma was finally able to attribute it to the two composers thanks to access to new information on the Inteet, according to a museum statement.

Scores of the cantata had been distributed at the time by a Vieese merchant, Artaria and Comp. The Prague copy is the only one to have survived.

False portrayal

The discovery is especially interesting in light of a legend discounted by historians: Salieri was said to have fatally poisoned Mozart out of jealousy over the Austrian wunderkind's talent

First appearing in Alexander Pushkin's 19th-century poetic drama "Mozart and Salieri," the rumour was later featured in the play and 1984 film "Amadeus", which historians say grossly exaggerated Salieri's rivalry with Mozart.

"We all know the film 'Amadeus.' Salieri is mischaracterised in it," said Ulrich Leisinger from the Inteational Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg.

"He didn't poison Mozart. The two composers regularly met up and collaborated in Viea."

The film was shot in the Czech capital, where Mozart spent considerable time in the 18th century as it was then part of the Austrian Empire.

Prague played host to the premiere of his celebrated opera Don Giovai in October 1787, which later had a lukewarm reception in the empire's capital Viea.

Mozart debuted another opera, The Clemency of Titus, in Prague in 1791.

This year marks the 260th aiversary of Mozart's birth and the 225th aiversary of his death.

"As far as I know, it's the only piece jointly written by Mozart and Salieri," said Herrma.

"But who knows: in a treasure house like this, anything can happen," he said of Prague's music museum.

The task force, dubbed "cultural peacekeepers", will be dispatched - when logistically possible - to assess the damage to globally-prized monuments or works in the wake of conflicts, earthquakes, floods or other disasters.

The main aim is to stop the looting and selling of heritage by militants to fund "terrorist activities", UNESCO said.

The task force will "assess risk and quantify damage done to cultural heritage sites, develop action plans and urgent measures, provide technical supervision and training for local national staff," the Italian ministry said in a statement.

It will also help transfer movable objects to safety "and strengthen the fight against looting and illegal trafficking of cultural property," the ministry said.

Thirty police art detectives and 30 archaeologists, restorers and art historians "are already operational and ready to go where UNESCO sends them," said Culture Minister Dario Franceschini.

Italy's art police have an inteational reputation for tracking down and recovering stolen works.

The hope, UNESCO director Irina Bokova said Tuesday, was that other countries would follow Rome's example and join the heritage fight.

The idea for an Italian, cultural version of the United Nations peacekeepers - known by their distinctive blue helmets - was voted in by the UN after the destruction of sites including in Syria's Palmyra by the Islamic State group.

IS seized control of Palmyra in May and has realized inteational fears by destroying some of the most prized sites in the UNESCO World Heritage listed ancient city.

The militants have carried out a sustained campaign of destruction against heritage sites in areas under their control in Syria and Iraq, including the important Iraqi sites of Hatra, Nimrud and Khorsabad, the ancient Assyrian capital.

Islamist militants are also accused of being behind attacks on 10 religious and historic monuments in the UNESCO World Heritage city of Timbuktu in Mali.

The Austrian govement aounced on Tuesday it would step up border controls at checkpoints along its southe frontier with Italy, Slovenia and Hungary to slow the migrant influx.

"There will be different structural measures from containers to further barriers" similar to the short mesh fence recently set up at Austria's main border crossing with Slovenia at Spielfeld, Interior Minister Johaa Mikl-Leitner said.

The govement also plans to create on Wednesday a daily cap on the number of migrants allowed into the country, she added.

The checkpoints Mikl-Leitner referred to are located in the states of Carinthia, Styria, Burgenland as well as Tyrol, which shares a border with Italy.

Austria has adopted an increasingly hardline stance as Europe struggles to cope with its worst migration crisis since the Second World War.

The country of nearly nine million people last year received 90,000 asylum claims, one of the bloc's highest rates per capita.

In response to the influx, Viea already waed last month it would cap this year's number of asylum claims at 37,500 and deport at least 12,500 people.

The denial came after reports in the Italian media speculated that the 28-year-old had collaborated with a London intelligence agency, Oxford Analytica.

The doctoral student had a contract with the agency between 2013 and 2014, La Repubblica reported. The company has declined to comment.

The media has also suggested that he worked for AISE, an Italian spy agency.

Regeni went missing in Cairo on January 25th and his body was found in early February in a ditch in the outskirts of the Egyptian capital.

The corpse showed signs of torture, but Egyptian authorities have dismissed accusations that security forces were behind the murder.

Speaking via their lawyer, Regen’s family denied he was an agent or collaborator for any secret service, either Italian or foreign.

Quoted by Ansa, they said that to try to push such a theory “offended the memory of a young university student who made field research a legitimate ambition of study and life”.

Many Italians believe he was abducted and killed by elements of the Egyptian security services.

Thousands of university lecturers and researchers have also signed a letter accusing Egypt of using torture against its own citizens and demanding an independent probe into Regeni’s death.

In the past, Italy has been criticized for never fully condemning the darkest episode in its recent political history.

As a result many people across Italy still hold some respect for the fascist dictator.

“Unlike other countries, Italy has never really squared up to it. Any discussion on fascism's darker side has been mute or even actively repressed,” Christopher Duggan, a history professor at the University of Reading in the UK told The Local.

And according to La Stampa, the Italian govement is readying €2 million to keep that episode alive by way of a museum in Benito Mussolini's home town of Predappio.

Critics say it will provide yet another focal point for neo-fascists, who already flock to the town each year in their droves.

Pro-Mussolini messages fill the visitor's book at his grave, while fascist pilgrims have spurred a roaring trade in all maer of right-wing paraphealia, from Mussolini calendars to baby grows.

SEE MORE: Revealed: the Italians who worship Mussolini

Some fear that the new museum will amount to nothing more than an expensive endorsement of fascism funded by public money - but organizers say they are keen to avoid this happening.

The museum is being pushed by Mayor Giorgio Frassineti, who told La Stampa that the project was not about celebrating Italy's notorious fascist dictator, but an attempt to "do something important for the history of our country."

Luca Lotti, the under-secretary of state for the centre-left Democratic Party, visited the town in late January to assure local officials that the museum could count on govement funding.

The museum would be housed in the former seat of the fascist party, a derelict building located 500 meters from the home in which Il Duce was bo.

The site is just over a kilometer from Mussolini’s crypt, a place which already attracts thousands of neo-fascists each year.

Fascist memorabilia on sale in Predappio includes 'I Love Il Duce' t-shirst. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

The total cost of the project comes in at some €5 million – of which another €2 million is expected to come from EU money, while the rest will be financed locally and through a private investment fund.

Organizers are keen to stress that the museum won’t take a positive view of the late dictator.

“We have collaborated on the project too," said Carlo Sarpieri, president of Anpi, the national partisan's association which commemorates the men and women who fought against fascism during the Second World War and is advising on the project.

"We hope our presence can eliminate all celebratory aspects of the museum," Sarpieri added.

"We will be keeping an eye on things to make sure it's done with the due historical and scientific rigour."

The woman, an Erasmus student, was taken to Cardarelli hospital but her injuries are not life-threatening, Il Mattino reported.

A 24-year-old Italian student was also injured in the explosion in the building on Via Giambattista Basile, a busy street in central Naples.

Fifteen others were safely evacuated.

The blast, believed to have been caused by a gas leak, happened in a workshop on the building’s ground floor at around 10pm.

The explosion was so strong it smashed windows of nearby shops as well as car windscreens. One car was also flipped on its side.

The five colourful, terraced fishing villages that make up the Cinque Terre on the Ligurian coastline are visited by some 2.5 million tourists each year.

But experts say that number is choking the life out of the small towns of Monterosso al Mare, Veazza, Coiglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore, all located inside the Unesco World Heritage national park.

This summer, park authorities will limit access to a fixed number of tourists, who will have to buy a special card online well in advance, although they are yet to establish what the figure will be.

They believe the number of visitors flocking to the area is already one million too high, and that the aual pounding is damaging the towns and the coastal walkways that link them.

“By summer we will have all the data we need to tell us how many tourists can walk each footpath on a given day according to weather conditions," national park president, Vittorio Alessandro, told La Repubblica.

From summer 2016, should tourists arrive at a given footpath after the visitor limit has been reached they will not be allowed access until the following day.

“It seems like an eccentric idea, especially at a time when everybody else is trying to increase tourism and fill hotel rooms,” Vittorio Alessandro said.

“But as a national park, we should also serve an educational function and we want to reduce tourism numbers to a more sustainable level.”

Alessandro hopes the scheme will be active within three months when high-season begins.

In addition to limiting visitor numbers, park authorities are also asking national rail provider, Trenitalia, to run special 'tourist only' train services.

The hope is that separate services will help improve congestion problems at the park's station between April and October, which make life a misery for residents and tourists alike.

“It puts security at risk, too” Alessandro explained. “We have trains racing past crowded platforms full of stressed passengers and huge queues where pickpocketing is common.”

"You see this one," he says, waving in the direction of a majestic but diseased olive tree on his property near Gallipoli on the Salento peninsula on Italy's heel.

"It is over one thousand years old. Fires and wars failed to kill it, but that's what xylella is doing."

Mai's wedding pictures were taken undeeath this particular tree. And he is filled with dread at the prospect of its imminent demise at the hands of a bacterial infection thought to be behind an outbreak of dessication ravaging the olive groves of this fertile coer of southe Italy.

"I am very pessimistic," the young spokesman for producers organization "La Voce dell'Ulivo" (The Olive's Voice), said. "I feel like we have no weapons with which to fight back."

The reason for Mai's despair is xylella fastidiosa, a deadly bacterial pathogen that has no known cure and, for reasons experts have so far been unable to explain, began infesting olive trees in Salento at the end of 2013.

More than a million trees, 10 percent of Salento's total, are estimated to have been infected in a a region where abundant olive groves are synonomous with the timeless landscape.

Most of those that have been infected have or will soon become stunted, leafless and ultimately lifeless.

How many trees will ultimately suffer that fate is unclear, as is the extent to which the bacteria has spread to other parts of Italy.

What is clear is that the potential damage is huge: xylella does not harm humans but can kill over 200 types of plant, including fruit trees and grape vines. "It is an environmental disaster," says Mai.

Under pressure from the European Union, the Italian govement last year approved the felling of some 3,000 trees under a plan to create a sanitary buffer zone between affected and non-affected areas, thereby hopefully containing the problem in Salento.

'Very worrying situation'

But a legal challenge from producers succeeded in halting the implementation of the scheme.

"Our expert told us that there it was not absolutely sure that xylella was the only reason for the dessication of the trees," explained Cattaldo Mota, a magistrate in the city of Lecce who ordered the halt.

"The identity of the landscape of the Salento is linked to the olive tree, we wanted to prevent it from being destroyed without an opportunity to look into the problem more deeply," Mota added.

To complicate matters further, 10 officials involved in tackling the disease have been placed under investigation on suspicion of misrepresenting the scientific evidence and acting in a way that threatened the environment in an area of outstanding natural beauty.

The local ruling was revised last week by Italy's Council of State. The culling of trees is once again authorized but it has to be done in agreement with growers who must be allowed time to carry out their own tests and evaluations.

The Italian authorities have also lifted a "xylella state of emergency" which gave them powers to enforce felling.

The situation, however, remains "very worrying", according to Giai Cantele, regional president of the national farmers' organization Coldiretti.

"The (insect-bo) disease is continuing to spread," he said.

Pantaleo Piccio's 270-hectare estate at Caprarica di Lecce is among those to have been infected. But he said he was still able to produce his oil.

"The progressive nature of the disease means an affected tree can continue to produce olives from the parts of it where the leaves are still green and there is no impact on the quality of the oil," he says.

Production also continues in parts of Puglia that are little or not at all affected by the epidemic.

But lost output has already had an impact on wholesale oil prices. A recent study in seven EU countries attributed a 20 percent hike over 2015 to the impact of the xylella crisis.

Coldiretti's Giai Cantele was that the disease could spread across olive growing areas across the northe Mediterranean with cases of xylella having already been detected on the island of Corsica and in southeaste France.

"The problem is that once xylella gets a foothold in an environment, it is very difficult to eradicate," he said. That's why, he explains, replanting in contaminated areas is currently baed.

Cantele said he was hopeful a compromise could be agreed with the European Commission under which older trees would be reprieved, younger diseased ones culled and producers authorized to replant.

But above all the Salento's olive growers are hoping that science will come up with a treatment for xylella sooner rather than later.

The retired primary school teacher enrolled on a bachelor's degree course in literature at Federico II University in 2011, as she had always regretted not going to university in favour of getting a job and having a family after finishing secondary school.

Despite her age, Carcaterra still had to face the same nerve-wracking ordeal that all Italian students endure before graduating - orally defending her thesis in front of a commission of academics.

Her grandchildren, children and friends were all there to support her as she explained her work on how the writings of medieval post Dante Alighieri influenced the 19th century revolutionary poet Ugo Foscolo.

Eventually, Carcaterra took her degree - graduating with top marks and honours.

“I hope it's an example to all the youngsters who give up,” she told La Stampa after her success. “If you keep going you will get there in the end.”

Vice Chancellor of Federico II University, Gaetano Manfredi, referred to Carcaterra as “an inspiration to our students” while her professor, Andrea Mazzucchi, said it had been “a strange but gratifying experience” to teach a woman of Carcaetta's age.

“She showed amazing tenacity and passion to get it done,” Mazzucchi added.

In an extremely sad phenomenon for Italy, the number of such marriages, usually between men of between 70 and 85 years and their foreign care workers, has grown rapidly since 2013, according to the figures from Istat, the national statistics agency.

But the nuptials have nothing to do with love.

The women, mostly easte European and Asian immigrants, are generally employed by the pensioners as home help, and work long hours for very low pay.

They see marrying their employer as an ideal way to escape the trap by rapidly obtaining a visa and perhaps, if they're lucky, gain some inheritance too.

“We're talking about very unscrupulous women,” marriage lawyer Luca Bei told La Stampa.

While the majority of Italian pensioners willingly tie the knot to fend off loneliness, some have fallen prey to abusive care staff, who force them into marriage or worse - try to kill them for inheritance.

La Stampa pointed to the case of Elena Basova, a Russian carer who allegedly abused her 78-year-old husband before trying to kill him by leaving the gas on at home.

But the issue has deeper roots and in the majority of cases widowed, divorced or single pensioners choose to marry – driven by their own sense of solitude.

One Italian pensioner near Parma recently tied the knot with his care worker even though he was fully aware that she was only doing it for the visa, and despite vociferous protests from his family.

Gian Ettore Grassani, the head of Ami, the Italian marriage lawyers' association, told The Local that the main source of the problem is families abandoning their elderly relatives – making them easy prey for exploitative care workers.

“Most of them prefer a blonde angel to children who can't even remember to say happy birthday,” Grassini said.

"These days there is so much solitude among the elderly – they don't stay with their families like they used to and often feel abandoned."

Grassini, whose book I Perplessi Sposi (The Confused Spouses), analyzed growing marriage rates among the elderly in general, added that the phenomenon is destined to keep growing.

"We have one of the oldest populations in Europe and we are seeing more and more immigration too," he said.

"For nearly one thousand years, Catholics and Orthodox have been deprived of communion in the Eucharist," they said in a joint declaration signed after talks in Cuba.

"We are pained by the loss of unity, the outcome of human weakness and of sin."

It was the first meeting between the heads of the Russian orthodox and Weste churches since the great schism of 1054 when the churches split apart, with the Easte church rejecting the authority of Rome.

"Mindful of the permanence of many obstacles, it is our hope that our meeting may contribute to the re-establishment of this unity willed by God," the church leaders said.

Their meeting was driven by rising violence in recent years in the Middle East, where Christian communities have suffered violence at the hands of extremists.

"We call upon the inteational community to act urgently in order to prevent the further expulsion of Christians from the Middle East," they said. "In many countries of the Middle East and North Africa whole families, villages and cities of our brothers and sisters in Christ are being completely exterminated," they went on.

"We wish to express our compassion for the suffering experienced by the faithful of other religious traditions who have also become victims of civil war, chaos and terrorist violence."

The 79-year-old Francis, in white robes and a skullcap, and Kirill, 69, in black robes and a white headdress, earlier

kissed and embraced before sitting down smiling for the historic meeting at Havana airport.

Between them, they are the spiritual leaders of more than 1.3 billion Christians.

"At last we meet. We are brothers," said the pope as he met the white-bearded Orthodox leader. "Clearly, this meeting is God's will."

"Fire at Sea" by award-wiing director Gianfranco Rosi, set on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, emerged as an early favourite among 18 contenders for the festival's Golden Bear top prize, to be awarded by jury president Meryl Streep on February 20.

The film provides an unflinching look at the thousands of desperate people who arrive on the island each year trying to enter the European Union, and the thousands more who have died trying.

But Rosi, who spent several months on Lampedusa making the documentary, also offers a tender portrait of the rhythms of daily life in Lampedusa's ancient fishing villages and efforts of local people to help those in need.

"It bears witness to a tragedy that is happening right before our eyes," Rosi told reporters following a enthusiastically received press preview.

"I think we are all responsible for that tragedy and perhaps after the Holocaust, it is the greatest tragedy we have ever seen in Europe."

The picture is told through the eyes of a 12-year-old local boy, Samuele Pucillo, and a doctor, Pietro Bartolo, who has been tending to the often dehydrated, malnourished and traumatised new arrivals for a quarter-century.

Rosi, who clinched the Venice film festival's 2013 Golden Lion for his film "Sacro GRA", also accompanied coastguard rescue missions answering the terrified SOS calls of people on overcrowded boats, most of them arriving from Libya.

They are taken to a reception centre for medical examinations and processing while awaiting transfer to other sites in Italy.

Rosi captures the migrants' overwhelming relief to be on dry land, the shock that gives way to mouing for their dead, and the crushing boredom they break up with rough-and-tumble football games.

In one powerful scene, a Nigerian man recounts the perilous jouey to Italy in a call-and-response chant with other African migrants, describing what was for many a deadly trek through the scorching Sahara, and the suffering endured at the hands of Islamic State jihadists and prison guards in Libya.

Bartolo, the doctor, said that he hoped the film would open more Europeans' eyes to the plight visible in Lampedusa every day, as the political debate grows more entrenched.

"I've seen so many terrible things, so many dead children, so many dead women, so many raped women. These things leave you with a great big empty hole in your stomach," he said.

"These are nightmares that haunt me very often."

Tim Robey of London's Daily Telegraph called the film "pertinent, humane" and "shattering" on Twitter, while Kate Muir of the Times pronounced it "brilliant".

Festival director Dieter Kosslick said ahead of the festival that a single theme ran through much of the selection this year: "the right to happiness -- the right to a home, to love, to self-determination, to life and to survival".

Hollywood star George Clooney and his wife Amal, a Lebanese-bo human rights lawyer, used the occasion of the festival to offer their backing and assistance to Chancellor Angela Merkel in a meeting at her office Friday, after Germany let in 1.1 million asylum seekers last year.

The 11-day cinema showcase is also featuring around a dozen films shining a light on the crisis in various ways.

German documentary "Havarie" traces the fate of a small rickety refugee boat in the Mediterranean, spotted by a tourist who made a mobile phone video from a cruise ship.

Danish film "Those Who Jump" hands the camera to a Malian migrant trapped in the high-security border facility between the EU and Africa as he and hundreds of other would-be asylum seekers plot their next move.

And Syrian-Iraqi production "Life of the Border" allowed eight children in a refugee camp in the Kurdish Syrian town of Kobane to film their own stories.

The festival runs until February 21.

For most people, apartment-hunting in Rome is time consuming, stressful – and expensive.

According to Numbeo, a database comparing living costs across the world, a one-bedroom apartment in the city centre will set you back an average of €1,040 a month, rising to €1,994 for three bedrooms.

But it seems that a lucky few have been able to snare apartments in the centre of the capital, a stone's throw away from tourist hotspots like Piazza Navona and the Colosseum, for just a few euros each month.

An investigation aimed at increasing transparency in the city council's activities has revealed that hundreds of buildings owned by Rome are being rented at rock-bottom prices.

So far 574 cases have been uncovered - but this number is likely to rise.

In a statement on Tuesday, Rome prefect Francesco Paolo Tronca, who is leading the investigation, said: “The contractual rents are well below the minimum market value. In many cases, the rents are a few dozen euros per month.”

Tronca was handed the assignment after Rome mayor Ignazio Marino resigned in November, and is managing the city until a new mayor is elected in June.

The homes include an apartment in Borgo Pio, close to St Peter’s Basilica, for €10.29 per month; one in Corso Vittorio Emanuele, one of Rome's main streets and close to Piazza Navona, for €24.41 per month; one with a view of the Imperial Forum at €23.36 per month and one on Via del Colosseo at a bargain €25.64 per month.

The properties are rented to private tenants for what amounts to small change – often the price has remained unchanged for decades.

Although the statement did not reveal how the properties came to be rented for such low prices, Tronca said that "investigations are underway to determine if any of the properties are being occupied illegally,” since in many cases the current occupants and the contract holders are not the same.

The commission also hopes to identify any council-owned properties for which rental contract renewals have been long neglected, while also hoping to claw back cash for Rome’s empty coffers.

Tronca intends to continue the "clean-up" until all of the city’s property assets have been checked.

A Rome estate agent told The Local that the city's authorities were most likely lax in doing their job of keeping up with leases, letting many fall by the wayside over the years.

In one astonishing case, captured in the investigation by Corriere in the video below, an apartment in Corviale, a housing complex in Rome's outskirts, is rented at the bargain price of €0.60 per year – that’s five cents every month.

The resident tells Corriere’s reporter that even this small amount has not been paid since his grandfather held the rental contract, when Lira was the national currency and the rent was 900 lire a month.

He says he is no longer charged any rent and that he didn't officially inherit the apartment's rental agreeement.

"No (inheritance) contract was ever made," he said, when asked if he is illegally occupying the building.

"The contract expired, the council hasn't bothered to renew it. My family has never left this house. Would you call that unlawful?"

By contrast, in the same building another resident who is not renting from city authorities said he pays €750 a month for his home.

Meanwhile, reports in the Italian media say the tenants in homes in some of Rome's swankier areas are mostly middle class and not eligible for social housing, and pay the meager sums because simply no one has ever bothered to raise them.

The city has aounced that from now on it would make sure that rents are in line with market rates and cancel the lease in cases where the legal renter has covertly sublet the apartment.

The estate agent said that in some cases, the properties "may have been used as bribes" by people working for the authorities.

For most people, apartment-hunting in Rome is time consuming, stressful – and expensive.

According to Numbeo, a database comparing living costs across the world, a one-bedroom apartment in the city centre will set you back an average of €1,040 a month, rising to €1,994 for three bedrooms.

But it seems that a lucky few have been able to snare apartments in the centre of the capital, a stone's throw away from tourist hotspots like Piazza Navona and the Colosseum, for just a few euros each month.

An investigation aimed at increasing transparency in the city council's activities has revealed that hundreds of buildings owned by Rome are being rented at rock-bottom prices.

So far 574 cases have been uncovered - but this number is likely to rise.

In a statement on Tuesday, Rome prefect Francesco Paolo Tronca, who is leading the investigation, said: “The contractual rents are well below the minimum market value. In many cases, the rents are a few dozen euros per month.”

Tronca was handed the assignment after Rome mayor Ignazio Marino resigned in November, and is managing the city until a new mayor is elected in June.

The homes include an apartment in Borgo Pio, close to St Peter’s Basilica, for €10.29 per month; one in Corso Vittorio Emanuele, one of Rome's main streets and close to Piazza Navona, for €24.41 per month; one with a view of the Imperial Forum at €23.36 per month and one on Via del Colosseo at a bargain €25.64 per month.

The properties are rented to private tenants for what amounts to small change – often the price has remained unchanged for decades.

Although the statement did not reveal how the properties came to be rented for such low prices, Tronca said that "investigations are underway to determine if any of the properties are being occupied illegally,” since in many cases the current occupants and the contract holders are not the same.

The commission also hopes to identify any council-owned properties for which rental contract renewals have been long neglected, while also hoping to claw back cash for Rome’s empty coffers.

Tronca intends to continue the "clean-up" until all of the city’s property assets have been checked.

A Rome estate agent told The Local that the city's authorities were most likely lax in doing their job of keeping up with leases, letting many fall by the wayside over the years.

In one astonishing case, captured in the investigation by Corriere in the video below, an apartment in Corviale, a housing complex in Rome's outskirts, is rented at the bargain price of €0.60 per year – that’s five cents every month.

The resident tells Corriere’s reporter that even this small amount has not been paid since his grandfather held the rental contract, when Lira was the national currency and the rent was 900 lire a month.

He says he is no longer charged any rent and that he didn't officially inherit the apartment's rental agreeement.

"No (inheritance) contract was ever made," he said, when asked if he is illegally occupying the building.

"The contract expired, the council hasn't bothered to renew it. My family has never left this house. Would you call that unlawful?"

By contrast, in the same building another resident who is not renting from city authorities said he pays €750 a month for his home.

Meanwhile, reports in the Italian media say the tenants in homes in some of Rome's swankier areas are mostly middle class and not eligible for social housing, and pay the meager sums because simply no one has ever bothered to raise them.

The city has aounced that from now on it would make sure that rents are in line with market rates and cancel the lease in cases where the legal renter has covertly sublet the apartment.

The estate agent said that in some cases, the properties "may have been used as bribes" by people working for the authorities.

Representatives from the 23 countries of the US-led coalition battling the jihadists' self-declared "caliphate" gathered in Rome to assess and renew their efforts.

Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni and US Secretary of State John Kerry told their allies that, since their meeting six months ago, the Isis group had suffered setbacks in its core territory in Syria and Iraq.

But the hosts waed that the group is adapting to the pressure on its heartland and is redirecting efforts to Libya, where it has seized new territory, and to attacks like those in Paris, Ankara and San Beadino, Califoia.

"We are surely not here to brag about anything," Kerry said, after saying Isis fighters have lost 40 percent of their territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria.

"We're here to recommit, we're here to re-evaluate, we're here to make judgements about things we have started that we could do better," he said.

Gentiloni said the challenge facing the coalition of mainly Weste and Arab nations is stark.

"We know that we have in front of us an organisation that is very resilient and able to plan strategically and so we should not underestimate it," he said.

"If anything we need to be ever more wary and more watchful because we know that the more Daesh is squeezed in its core territories the more tempted it is pursue its terrorist activities elsewhere," he waed, using an Arabic name for Isis.

"We are witnessing renewed activity in Libya and in sub-Saharan Africa," he said.

Italy has taken the lead with the coalition in plaing for how to address the Isis threat a short boat ride from its southe shores in the Libyan city of Sirte.

"In the past few months the threat in our own homelands has taken on a new more dangerous dimension requiring the coalition's focused and coordinated attention," he added.

'No place to run'

Washington likes to claim that it has built a 66-nation coalition to fight the Isis group -- the latest country to join this week was Afghanistan, Kerry said.

But a so-called "small group" of 23 nations has taken the lead in carrying out air strikes in Iraq and Syria and training and arming local forces to fight the jihadists.

Kerry said that the effort now needs to be stepped up, citing the example of the United States' deployment of small numbers of special forces troops inside Syria.

"The challenge now, my friends, is pretty straightforward," he said, in opening remarks to his coalition colleagues ahead of a longer closed-door dialogue.

"To push ahead with a strategy we have leaed will work and to do so relentlessly, giving Daesh no time to regroup, no place to run, no safe havens in which to hide.

"This will not be a profitable meeting if we don't talk about what we can do better, because we're still not at the victory that we want to achieve and will achieve."

The nations were to meet for the rest of the day.