Devastated by an April earthquake that killed nearly 300 people and ringed by tent camps with portable toilets, L'Aquila is a far cry from previous G8 host cities like the Baltic seaside town of Heiligendamm, French lakeside resort Evian and Scottish golf resort Gleneagles.

    U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders are being housed in a grey police school building on the outskirts of the mountain town, where they are to stay in spartan rooms with granite floors and cream-coloured walls and furnished with little more than simlpe wooden beds with white sheets.

    "There won't be the luxuries of hotels on (Sardinia's) Emerald Coast or (Rome's) Via Veneto, but there will be dignified accommodation worthy of welcoming such important people," said Italy's emergency services chief, Guido Bertolaso.

    Room service menus will be absent, but each room will be supplied with instructions on what to do in the event of another earthquake.  Aftershocks have been persistent and plentiful in the run-up to the summit.

    In their free time, leaders can browse through an exhibit on "100 years of earthquakes" in Italy or take up Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's offer of a guided tour of areas laid to waste by the tremor, like Germany's Angela Merkel did on Wednesday.

Earthquake victims have even welcomed leaders with a giant sign on a hill near the summit site declaring "Yes we camp" to protest the slow pace of reconstruction in the area.

For all the lack of luxury, L'Aquila does guarantee voters back home will see images of their leaders rolling up their sleeves under the hot Abruzzo sun at a time of recession and financial turmoil.

    "I think it's better to have (the summit) in a damaged zone than in an ultra-touristy region where people are spending millions of dollars on their vacations, while the leaders are there to discuss solutions to the global economic crisis," said Dimitri Soudas, spokesman for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, ahead of the summit.

    Italy was initially set to host the annual summit of leaders from the world's richest nations on the picturesque island of Sardinia, but hastily moved it to L'Aquila citing solidarity with victims when faced with complicated logistics and spiralling costs.

    One thing that won't be lacking at the summit is fine Italian cuisine, since good food is not a luxury given up easily in Italy.  Among the local delicacies on offer are goat on skewers, baby lamb, rabbit from the small town of Goriano Valli, artichokes from Prezza and red garlic from nearby Sulmona.

A month after an earthquake killed nearly 300 people in Italy, the initial goodwill towards authorities for their swift handling of the disaster appears to be giving way to anger as survivors face an uncertain wait for promised funds and the prospect of a long summer in tents.

Italy's government is promising to start providing the thousands made homeless in the central Italian region of Abruzzo with new, furnished houses by September -- in what would be record speed anywhere. But continued aftershocks, rain and chilly temperatures have made life increasingly difficult for survivors in tents, which left-leaning newspapers have seized upon to issue long accounts of the "nightmare" of life in the 170 tent camps.

"I feel like I've already spent an entire lifetime inside here but only 30 days have passed," one tent-dweller, Claudio, told La Repubblica newspaper, which said the arrival of reconstruction funds in installments meant some people might have to wait nearly two years for a house.

    A government decree promising 8 billion euros ($10.7 billion) to rebuild the areas devastated by the earthquake has also fallen under a cloud of controversy. Mayors in quake-hit towns complain it undermines their role in rebuilding efforts and the opposition say it is inadequate. 

   Even normally pro-government bodies like the business lobby Confindustria are beginning to question how much money will actually arrive, and when.

   "The first thing that must be done is to understand well how much money is really and immediately available for spending, because businessmen have told us that operations related to re-opening businesses need to be done quickly," Emma Marcegaglia, the head of Confindustria, said on a tour around the hard-hit town of L'Aquila this week.

   The opposition Democratic Party's Pier Luigi Bersani, meanwhile, is accusing the government of treating the disaster like a "second division earthquake".

    All this criticism is a far cry from the initial hours and days following the quake, when glowing praise flowed in from home and abroad for a swift and seamless relief effort that appeared to highlight a side of Italy that belies its reputation for chaos and slow-moving bureaucracy.

    At least seven different units -- the police, the elite military police, the forest corps, the army, firefighters, the financial police and the civil protection agency -- rolled into L'Aquila hours after the pre-dawn quake. The first tents for the newly homeless were up barely 12 hours after disaster struck.

    By then, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had already cancelled a trip to Moscow and held a midday press conference in L'Aquila, where he didn't skip a beat as an aftershock rocked the building while he was speaking.

    The next morning, a long row of portable toilets had been set up in the main tent camp outside the town center, and relief workers were already going from tent to tent offering diapers and sanitary napkins.

    Bathrooms for the disabled with running water were next to appear, followed by more tents, each furnished with beds, new mattresses, linen and blankets, prompting praise from survivors, including one woman who called relief workers "angels".

    The 170 tent camps that were rapidly set up house more than 33,000 people today, while the remaining 32,000 left homeless have been put up in hotels requisitioned by the government or in private homes.

    The efficient roll-out of relief efforts quickly boosted Berlusconi's popularity, allowing him to declare last week that he is the world's most popular leader and move a Group of Eight summit in July, long-planned for a Sardinian island, to the quake zone.

    But the premier, who is also having to handle an ugly public spat with his wife, who wants a divorce, will need to make good on his promise to rebuild the quake zone quickly and find homes for survivors in months, or risk losing the goodwill he has built up.

 Other candidates have chosen more traditional venues for the evening: the centre-right's Silvio Berlusconi will be waiting it out at his villa in Arcore near Milan, while centre-left rival Walter Veltroni will be standing by at his party's offices in Rome dubbed the "Loft".

Far-right leader Daniela Santanche says she won't stray far from her home in Milan, while Northern League leader Umberto Bossi and centrist leader Pier Ferdinando Casini will both be holed up at their respective party headquarters.

Italy's interior ministry has banned Italians from carrying cellphones or any device that can take pictures or videos into the voting booth, over fears of corruption. Sandra Mastella caused a minor stir when her cell phone started ringing while she voted in the southern town of Ceppaloni on Sunday, prompting electoral workers to call in the police. It turns out her cell phone did not double as a camera, meaning she was not violating the law.

"It was a banal distraction, I had it in my pocket," Mastella said.

There were minor hiccups at other polling stations as well. In the northern town of Sant'Orsola, the head of a local polling station showed up drunk, prompting colleagues to call in the police. The chief was fined and a new, sober polling booth chairman was instated.

Angry at plans to build a landfill site nearby, one group of young Neapolitans  gathered 600 election identification cards and sent them to the Italian president instead of using them to vote.

"I'm not going to vote because I don't feel represented by the institutions and because there is no-one that worries about preserving our rights," group member Sebastian Perrone told the Ansa news agency. 

Another angry Neapolitan took an even more novel approach: he ate his ballot form at the polling booth.

Finally, motorists on the A14 highway in Italy were greeted on Sunday morning by two large banners spray painted with the words : "Enough with politics, We want colonels!" They were quickly taken down by police.

A popular "anti-politics" movement led by figures like comedian Beppe Grillo has swept up about 6 to 8 percent of voters, estimates the pollster Luigi Crespi. He estimates the number of blank ballots will nearly triple to about 1 million during the April 13-14 election from about 400,000 in the last parliamentary election two years ago.

"Berlusconi? He's obsessed with me. But I won't give it to him...," Santanche said during a campaign stop this week.

Berlusconi initially responded by saying he would not get into a debate with someone who comes from a world of "yachts, caviar and champagne." But he was willing to play ball a day later. 

"Well! If she continues to come on to me....," the media tycoon told reporters when they prodded him on Santanche's comments again. 

Santanche and Berlusconi have been trading barbs throughout the election campaign, with the 47-year old businesswoman's La Destra party expected to steal  votes on the right away from the 71-year old media tycoon looking to return to power for the third time.

Santanche -- conscious of the small splash she has made by becoming one of the few women prime minister candidates in Italy -- has reserved some of her sharpest rebukes for Berlusconi, urging Italian women not to vote for him and calling his views outdated and sexist.  

"Berlusconi better be careful, because on April 13-14, Italian women will be the ones to cook his goose," Santanche told Reuters last week.