Pappardella Allardata Festival

The festival celebrating pappardella allardata

In the heart of summer, the village of Sant'Angelo, in the municipality of Mercato San Severino (Salerno province, Campania), dedicates several evenings to a dish that is a family memory here before it is even a restaurant recipe: pappardella allardata, wide pasta tossed with lard, born when home-raised pigs provided the peasant kitchen with its precious fat. The Pappardella Allardata Festival has turned this humble dish into a small symbol of the Irno Valley's identity, bringing it back to the center of the table every August.

Where it takes place

The event's headquarters is the Roberto Sellitto sports center on Via Torrione, in Sant'Angelo. It is a large, open-air space that, for the occasion, fills with long communal tables, food stalls, and a stage for music. Choosing the sports center over the town square allows for comfortably accommodating the many people who arrive each evening from the neighboring towns of the Irno Valley and the Agro Nocerino, as well as from the city of Salerno.

What to eat

The menu is the generous, no-frills style typical of Campanian festivals. Recent editions have featured:

• pappardelle allardate, the dish that gives the festival its name;
• grilled sausage sandwiches, a great classic of summer evenings;
• sandwiches with capocollo and grilled eggplant;
• cones of freshly fried chips;
• wheat pastiera, for a sweet finish.

Everything is prepared and served by local volunteers, who organize themselves in the kitchen in the days leading up to the event just like for a large family lunch: this, even more than the menu, is the true spirit of the festival.

Music and atmosphere

The stalls open in the evening, around 8:00 PM, as the heat fades and the village comes to life. Alongside the food, there is musical entertainment, with 80s dance music nights having accompanied recent editions. The atmosphere is that of a typical southern village festival: entire families sitting at the same table, children running around the square, and groups of friends reuniting once a year, with no ceremonies and no tickets required.

A festival that has returned

The festival has not had a continuous history. Local press reported its "long-awaited return" in 2023 after a hiatus that had left a void in the Sant'Angelo summer calendar, and the event was held again in August 2025, from the 20th to the 24th, once again at the Via Torrione sports center. The bond with the community is such that the event is promoted year after year primarily through the social media channels of the organizers and the municipal administration, rather than through formal institutional communication.

Sant'Angelo and the surrounding area

Mercato San Severino is one of the most populous centers in the Irno Valley, halfway between Salerno and the Agro Nocerino-Sarnese, and is dominated by the imposing ruins of the medieval castle of the Sanseverino family, one of the most extensive fortified complexes in Southern Italy. The municipal territory is made up of numerous hillside villages—Sant'Angelo is one of them—each with its own festivals, churches, and recipes: a mosaic that makes the summer in San Severino particularly packed with gastronomic events.

Tips for your visit

It is best to arrive early, as soon as the stalls open, to avoid queues at the cash registers on peak nights. The area is outdoors: a light sweater is useful on late August evenings when the temperature drops in the hills. As this is a village festival, parking is found along the surrounding roads: it is better to leave the car a little further away and walk to the sports center.