How one man’s love of isolation put an Italian ghost town on the map

Abandoned hamlet's last remaining resident is now its unofficial guide. Our writer joins him for a tour

Giuseppe Spagnuolo wakes up at about 6am each day, eats the leftovers of the previous night's dinner for breakfast, greets the stray cats he calls his security guards" and clambers down the steps of his crumbling home to splash his face with water from the fountain in the square. Occasionally, he walks up to the next village, if his aches and pains" allow, for coffee in the bar.

For 25 years, Spagnuolo has been the only inhabitant in Roscigno Vecchia, a long-abandoned hamlet 400m up a mountain in the Cilento area of Italy's southern Campania region. If you've experienced the school of life like I have, then you can easily live this way," the 74-year-old said, sitting in front of the fire in his kitchen, which is cluttered with pots, pans, bottles of wine, tinned tomatoes, cheese and hanging salamis.