Camp di Grano and Palio del Grano

A festival truly born from the work of the fields

In Caselle in Pittari, a small municipality in the Province of Salerno nestled in the Cilento hinterland, in Campania, the third week of July is entirely dedicated to wheat. The Palio del Grano is not a staged re-enactment: it is a real hand-reaping competition, born in the mid-2000s on the initiative of local sociologist Antonio Pellegrino together with the Pro Loco and local organizations, in a town where cutting wheat with a scythe was abandoned only a few decades ago. In 2026, the Palio reaches its 22nd edition, preceded as always by the Camp di Grano, the week of immersion in the peasant world that prepares for the final challenge.

How the competition works: eight districts, eight cumbàri towns

On the morning of the Palio, it starts very early, when the air is still cool: the teams reach the fields and each is assigned a strip of land about five meters wide and a hundred meters long. From then on, only the scythe, the rhythm, and the teamwork count.

• Eight districts of Caselle in Pittari — Chiazza, Maronna ra Grazia, Forgia Mardedda, Castieddu, Urmu, Taverna, Scarano, and Pantanedda — four from the historic center and four from the new town, each with its own colors.
• Eight «cumbàri» towns, twinned with the districts since 2010, which send their reapers to reinforce the teams: the Palio has thus become a festival for the entire district.
• Twenty people per team: six reapers from the district, six from the twin town, and eight women who bind the sheaves, for about 160 participants in the competition.
• The team that finishes cutting and binding to a professional standard first wins; this is followed by the weighing of the wheat and the collective lunch, a moment when the competition dissolves into conviviality.

The Camp di Grano: an open-air peasant school

Before the competition, there is the Camp di Grano, promoted by the Pro Loco Caselle in Pittari APS with the Youth Forum and the Monte Frumentario project of the Terra di Resilienza cooperative. For a week, participants — young people, students, the curious, farmers — experience all the phases of the supply chain from the inside: manual reaping, gathering the ears, learning about the different varieties of wheat and their evolution over time, preparing the aria (threshing floor), treading, and threshing according to traditional techniques. There is no shortage of moments dedicated to home baking and meetings with the local agricultural world, its knowledge, and its stories. Since 2015, the Camp has effectively functioned as a summer school dedicated to rural producers and innovators.

The 2026 edition: the theme «IOCA»

The 2026 edition takes place from July 13 to 19 and is titled «IOCA», a dialect term meaning «play» or «have fun». An invitation to rediscover the playful and collective dimension of working in the fields, after the «CHIANU CHIANU» of 2025 which instead invited people to slow down. The week closes on Sunday, July 19 with the traditional challenge between the districts and the award ceremony.

The Wheat Library and cereal biodiversity

The Palio is the tip of the iceberg of work that lasts all year. In Caselle in Pittari, the Wheat Library is active, an experimental field where numerous varieties of wheat are grown and preserved; in 2025, the project extended to the village with the Borgoteca del Grano, promoted by the Terra di Resilienza social cooperative and the Municipality, which led to the sowing of 120 varieties of wheat along alleys, courtyards, and the edges of houses in the historic center. Walking through the town thus means literally crossing a living archive of agricultural biodiversity.

Caselle in Pittari and the Cilento hinterland

The municipality is located within the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park, in an area of caves, rivers, and cultivated plateaus that has preserved the economy of exchange and self-production longer than elsewhere. It is this context that makes the Palio del Grano different from many summer festivals: here, peasant memory is not a folkloric souvenir, but a practice that families have experienced firsthand and that the younger generation is taking back into their own hands. For those visiting Campania in summer, it is an opportunity to see a side of Cilento far from the beaches, made of wheat, bread, and community.