There is a running joke in Italy that the region of Molise simply does not exist. One of Italy’s smallest, poorest, and arguably least known regions, Molise has always lived on the fringes of Italian consciousness. It is merely a blip in international circles.

While travel writers obsess over the rest of Italy, this land of livestock and valleys, the proverbial Wild West of Italy, rarely even comes up in travel magazines. For the past few years, the idea of a nonexistent Molise has been immortalized through the banal of things – a hashtag. The hashtag, #ilmolisenonesiste (Molise doesn’t exist), has been used more than 14,000 times on Instagram alone.