Errichetta Festival

A grassroots festival in the heart of Rome

The Errichetta Festival is one of the most original experiences in the musical landscape of Rome and the entire Lazio region. It began in 2012 as an idea from eight young Roman musicians—the Errichetta Underground collective—who, upon returning to the city after studying at major European conservatories, decided to meet once a year to share their work on oral tradition music. What started as a gathering of friends has grown in just over a decade into an internationally recognized event, produced by the Officina delle Culture APS association and supported by the Ministry of Culture as a premier contemporary and auteur music festival.

Traditional music as a living language

The core of the project is a simple conviction: oral tradition music is not a museum piece, but a living language that continues to generate new forms. For this reason, the program always pairs great performers of traditional repertoires—polyphonies, songs, dances, and ancient instruments—with new original creations inspired by those same roots. Over the years, the stage has hosted musicians from Georgia, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Greece, Turkey, Catalonia, Portugal, Lebanon, and France, always in dialogue with Roman and Italian traditions.

More than just concerts

The Errichetta Festival stands out for its multidisciplinary structure, which goes far beyond the standard evening concert format:

• Evening concerts at the Teatro Garbatella, the event's historic home, featuring multiple groups each night;
• Concerts in evocative settings, particularly in the city's historic churches, where sacred and polyphonic repertoires find ideal acoustics;
• Free workshops on traditional music, open to professional musicians, amateurs, and enthusiasts (registration required);
• Film screenings dedicated to world music;
• Folk dances and after-parties, which extend the evening and turn the audience into active participants.

Teatro Garbatella and the festival venues

The home of Errichetta is the Teatro Garbatella, located at Piazza Giovanni da Triora 15, in Rome's most beloved working-class neighborhood: a place with a strong identity, far from tourist circuits, which perfectly suits the communal spirit of the event. Over the years, the festival has expanded to other spaces in the capital and the Roman province—the Church of San Giorgio in Velabro, the La Città dell'Utopia social center on Via Ostiense, the Cinema Greenwich in Testaccio, and in some editions, the Church of San Nicola in Riofreddo, in the upper Aniene Valley.

An international network

While remaining an independent and self-managed project, the Errichetta Festival has built a dense network of cultural partners over the years: the Fondation Meyer, ISMEO, the French Academy in Rome (Villa Medici), the Institut Ramon Llull, and the cultural institutes of Poland, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Turkey, and Georgia. The festival is also a member of the European festival network and is supported through the Art Bonus, the state tax credit for cultural patronage, which allows individuals and businesses to contribute directly to the project.

Why attend

For those seeking an alternative to the typical Christmas lights and markets in Rome this December, this festival offers something rare: five days where you can listen to Georgian polyphony, learn a Greek dance step, attend a concert in a medieval church, and end the night dancing. It is a human-scale festival with a loyal audience and accessible prices, restoring the most authentic meaning of the word "tradition": something that is passed on because it continues to be practiced.