Europe's largest tour operator has hit on a novel way to capitalise on Germany's long-standing love affair with Italy. It has bought an entire village for its package holiday customers.
The village of Castelfalfi, an hour's drive from Florence, has just four permanent residents, about 15 houses and a church with a collapsed roof where the clock is stuck at 7.22.
Around it is a stunning landscape of cypress, pine and olive trees: exactly how generations of Germans have imagined Tuscany since Johann Wolfgang Goethe came here in the 18th century and penned his famous poem, "Know'st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom". So many ministers in the Schröder government come here on holiday that wags dubbed them the "Tuscany Faction".
But the Italian media has reacted with furious headlines of "Teutonic Tuscany" to the news that TUI now owns Castelfalfi and 1,000 surrounding hectares of hills, fields and olive groves.
The Hanover-based company has applied for planning permission to spend €250 million upgrading it to a four-star resort with three hotels, two golf courses as well as rental apartments, restaurants and shops, all catering for up to 3,000 tourists at a time.
TUI says the plan is a kiss of life to Castelfalfi, which became a near ghost town from the 1960s on after villagers began moving to cities during industrialisation.
Cobwebs now cover doorways of the picturesque but empty stone houses, long since colonised by birds and creeping vegetation.
The last thing TUI wants, a spokesman said, is a Tuscan theme park.
"We want to keep the typical Tuscan landscape because the target group for Tuscany wants such a landscape," a spokesman said.
The few villagers left seem unperturbed by the plans.
"It's a bit too quiet around here," said Camillo Carli, a 73-year-old gamekeeper. "If there is money, it will be money for everyone," he said. "Otherwise there's just misery."
TUI's plan now lies with Paola Rosetti, mayor of the nearby town of Montaione, which administers Castelfalfi.
"We will consider the TUI project and get expert opinions," she said. "But always in the back of our head is the knowledge that, here in Toscana, we have a wonderful landscape and so we have to check whether this project won't disturb our ambience."
That is exactly what worries the locals: that the unique features of Tuscany that attracts the tourists will be destroyed if more modern buildings are constructed and convoys of tour buses arrive.
The foreign invasion of German and British tourists in recent years has created increasing resistance to new mass tourism projects.
But others are more optimistic that there's enough Tuscany to go round.
"It's all just a question of management," said Francesco from Rome, a long-time visitor to Castelfalfi. "The place will stay the same: it's magical and the natural landscape speaks for itself. That's how it will stay."
