Marameo Festival

The Marameo Festival in Giovinazzo

The Marameo Festival is the largest Italian summer festival dedicated to theatre for children and families. Born from a project by Proscenio Teatro launched in the 1980s in the Marche region, the festival has grown into a widespread event spanning multiple regions and dozens of municipalities. In Giovinazzo, a coastal town in the Metropolitan City of Bari, Puglia, the event transforms the historic center into an open-air stage for the little ones.

A major widespread festival

The strength of Marameo lies in its itinerant nature: the 2026 edition, the tenth, runs from June 5th to September 29th, involving about forty municipalities across various regions of Central and Southern Italy, from Abruzzo to Calabria, passing through Lazio, Marche, Molise, and Puglia. The program features about one hundred and sixty events including performances, workshops, meetings, and exhibitions, with a particular focus on accessibility and inclusion, considered a right for all children. The festival is organized by a network of theatre companies including, among others, Proscenio Teatro and Arterie Teatro.

Performances in Giovinazzo

In Giovinazzo, as in the nearby towns of Molfetta and Bisceglie, the programming is curated by the Arterie Teatro association, a school of performing arts directed by Alessandra Sciancalepore. The events are traditionally held in Piazza Meschino, in the heart of the old town, and feature puppet theatre, storytelling, puppet shows, and sensory workshops that combine play, manual skills, and discovery. The evenings, part of the Giovinazzo Estate program, attract a large audience of children and adults every year.

Who is it for?

The festival is aimed at children aged 3 and up and their families, with activities suitable even for the youngest. Alongside the evening performances, experiential workshops — from storytelling through cooking to hands-on activities with earth and flavors — directly involve children, turning theatre viewing into an active and participatory experience.

Giovinazzo, Puglia, and children's theatre

Hosting a children's theatre festival among the alleys and squares of Giovinazzo's historic center means returning a lived-in and shared urban space to the little ones. In a region like Puglia, increasingly attentive to culture and quality tourism, Marameo represents a precious asset: it introduces new generations to the language of theatre and enlivens the summer evenings of the Province of Bari with high-quality national offerings.