Pollica Incontra Festival

A square that returns to being an agora

Pollica Incontra is not a festival built around a stage, but a series of encounters that restores to the square of Pollica its most ancient function: that of a place where ideas become relationships. On summer evenings, the Cilento village, overlooking the sea in the province of Salerno, hosts writers, journalists, doctors, scientists, artists, and public figures who converse with residents and visitors, sitting under the open sky, without filters or barriers. It is a simple, almost ancient formula that, in a territory of small towns, takes on a precise value: demonstrating that culture is not a privilege of large cities.

Who promotes it: the Paideia Campus and the Municipality of Pollica

The festival is conceived and curated by Sara Roversi and promoted by the Paideia Campus of the Future Food Institute Foundation, a permanent laboratory active in Pollica since 2020, in collaboration with the Municipality of Pollica led by Mayor Stefano Pisani. The stated goal is to create a space for listening and reflection capable of imagining new trajectories for human development and ecological regeneration. «The future is not waited for. The future is created» is the phrase with which the curator summarizes the spirit of the events: not top-down conferences, but public conversations in which the community is an active participant.

The themes at the heart of the dialogues

The common thread is declared from the very subtitle, Dialogues for inhabiting the future. The meetings address some of the most urgent issues of our time, with an informative yet never superficial approach:

• the impact of social networks and artificial intelligence on information and democracy;
• health, prevention, and quality of life, with a particular focus on the Mediterranean Diet;
• restanza (the art of staying) and the future of small towns in inland areas;
• climate migration and the right to remain in one's own land;
• beauty as a force for social and civil transformation.

Pollica, a laboratory of the Mediterranean Diet

It is no coincidence that a festival so oriented toward the future was born right here. Pollica, with its hilly hamlets (Celso, Galdo, Cannicchio) and the seaside areas of Acciaroli and Pioppi, is considered one of the emblematic communities of the Mediterranean Diet recognized by UNESCO: the American physiologist Ancel Keys worked in Pioppi, and the village is home to the Living Museum of the Mediterranean Diet and the activities of the Future Food Institute. Today, the municipality is an international reference point on issues of food, health, and sustainability, and Pollica Incontra represents its cultural voice addressed to the general public.

A summer in Cilento, between villages and the sea

The meetings are part of the summer program that the Municipality builds every year together with local associations and cultural operators, featuring music, theater, open-air cinema, book presentations, and family initiatives. Those who participate in Pollica Incontra find themselves in the heart of the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park: by day, the beaches of Acciaroli and Pioppi, the trails among the olive trees, and the medieval village dominated by the Castello dei Principi Capano; by night, the square that fills up to listen and discuss.

Why it's worth attending

In a landscape of summer events often built on entertainment, Pollica Incontra chooses the opposite path: few appointments, high-level national guests, and plenty of time dedicated to questions from the public. For those spending their holidays in Campania, it is an opportunity to get to know Cilento not only through the sea, but through the people who inhabit it and the ideas that circulate there.