Piccolo Festival Civico "Rehabiting the Village"

A festival built together

The Piccolo Festival Civico "Rehabiting the Village" is not a series of performances to watch from the sidelines, but a collective project: for one full week, the historic center of Grotte di Castro, in the province of Viterbo (Lazio), becomes a widespread laboratory where everyone can get involved. Alleys, squares, and scenic overlooks host drawing tables, craft stations, collaborative installations, and social gatherings born from the work done together in the preceding days.

The underlying concept is clear from the title: rehabiting means restoring life, meaning, and beauty to public spaces, recognizing them as communal assets for which the community is responsible. This theme is far from abstract in a village in the Alta Tuscia, just a few kilometers from Lake Bolsena.

The project behind it

The festival is the most visible part of the project "New Scenarios for Ancient Villages and Territories. A community imagines its future," funded by the Ministry of Culture through PNRR (Next Generation EU) funds dedicated to the attractiveness of historic villages. It is directed by the Semi di Rigenerazione Association, which works in the area alongside the Grotte di Castro municipal administration.

This same path led to the opening of the Community House in March 2026, a space in the heart of the historic center—formerly the podestà's residence and later an oil mill—designed for participation, creativity, and shared planning. The festival and the Community House are two sides of the same coin: one lights up the village for a week, while the other aims to sustain that energy all year round.

A typical day

The program alternates between short, recurring activities so that no one feels pressured to commit for the entire week. Past editions have featured:

• Design and manual arts workshops — drawing, lantern making, wreaths, and decorative motifs for the village
• Community Education courses — cooking for children, crochet, and other skills passed down by local experts
• Collective drawing stations open in the square, where works grow day by day
• Exploratory walks to discover the hidden corners and history of the old town
• Collective games and a toy library on the weekend, featuring temporary urban installations
• Self-managed social lunch on Sunday, followed by a closing walk

No special skills or complicated registration are required: activities are free, designed for all ages, and structured so that visitors can join in without feeling like outsiders.

Grotte di Castro and the Alta Tuscia

Grotte di Castro sits on a tuff spur overlooking the basin of Lake Bolsena, in a part of northern Lazio that preserves the Etruscan and medieval imprint of the old Duchy of Castro. It is a town of a few thousand inhabitants, also known for its potato cultivation and its historic mid-August festival: a context where the issues of depopulation and the reuse of space are not theoretical exercises, but daily realities.

This is why the Piccolo Festival Civico has a different character from large summer festivals: small by choice, civic by vocation. Visitors won't find a stage and an audience, but a village that works on itself for a few days—and gladly accepts an extra pair of hands.

What to expect

A cozy, informal atmosphere, the slow pace of the Tuscia villages, and the chance to truly get to know the locals. The works created during the week remain on display in the village as visible traces of the community's passage. For those seeking a participatory travel experience far from crowded tourist circuits, this is a rare opportunity in the Lazio region.