L'Arrosticcere in Piazza

The festival that tells the story of the arrosticino

L'Arrosticcere in Piazza is a historical and gastronomic re-enactment held in the historic center of Civitaquana, a hillside village in the province of Pescara, in the heart of Abruzzo. The event celebrates the undisputed king of the Abruzzo table, the arrosticino, and recounts its most ancient roots through a faithful re-enactment of its primitive cooking technique.

The 1930 photograph

The heart of the event is tied to an extraordinary historical record. In 1930, during a village festival in Civitaquana, two Swiss anthropologists, Paul Scheuermeier and Gerhard Rohlfs, took a photograph of the traditional way of cooking arrosticini: hand-cut sheep meat skewered on olive or dogwood twigs, roasted between two rows of bricks. That image, considered the oldest photographic evidence of arrosticini cooking, was printed on the cover of the work Gli Abruzzi dei contadini, a precious document of Abruzzo's rural civilization.

The Ginestrino family and the re-enactment

The re-enactment of the primitive cooking method is curated by the Ginestrino family, true locals of Civitaquana who recognized their own ancestors in the subjects of the 1930 photo. In the village squares, the ancient act of cooking between bricks, passed down from generation to generation, is reconstructed before visitors. The initiative is sponsored by the Museo delle Genti d'Abruzzo and is enriched by village tours, food and wine stands, a local crafts market, children's activities, folk music, and traditional dances.

A village celebrating its identity

Organized by the social promotion association L'Arrosticcere in Piazza APS with the support of the Municipality of Civitaquana and the Abruzzo Region, the event attracts thousands of visitors every year, transforming the streets and squares of the historic center into a grand open-air narrative. Among the village alleys, you can breathe in the scent of arrosticini on the embers and rediscover a tradition that unites gastronomy, anthropology, and the proud identity of an entire Abruzzo community.