San Cesareo Music Festival

The summer solstice in music

Every year on June 21st, San Cesareo welcomes the arrival of summer with its Music Festival: an open-air concert under the stars that transforms Piazza Giulio Cesare into a vibrant stage. This event is part of the vast European Music Festival network, which originated in France in 1982 and has been celebrated in Italy since 1995, filling squares, streets, and courtyards across the continent with music on the day of the solstice. In 2026, the festival reached its 32nd edition, cementing its place as one of the most anticipated events on the local calendar.

The municipal band and the junior band

The beating heart of the evening is the APS Banda e Coro Comunale di San Cesareo, an association recognized for its civic importance and registered with the Lazio Region's band directory. Under the direction of Maestro Gerardo Scarano, the band brings together musicians of all ages. Alongside the main ensemble, it features a lively junior band—a showcase for young students from the association's music school, which is open to anyone wishing to learn an instrument: saxophone, clarinet, flute, trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba, piano, guitar, percussion, and drums.

A program dedicated to film soundtracks

The 2026 edition, held on Sunday, June 21st, at 9:00 PM in front of the San Giuseppe Church, took the audience on a journey through the most famous film soundtracks, performed by the municipal band and the junior band. Film music, with its instantly recognizable melodies, is the perfect choice for a public square setting: it engages audiences of all generations and allows young instrumentalists to perform alongside more experienced musicians.

A community celebration

The San Cesareo Music Festival is, above all, a moment of togetherness. Every year, the municipal administration invites the entire citizenry to participate, and the square responds by filling with families, young people, and music lovers. Admission is free, in line with the original spirit of the European event, which seeks to make music accessible to everyone and puts musicians—both professionals and amateurs—at the center of public life.

San Cesareo, between Rome and the Prenestini Mountains

The town of San Cesareo is located along the ancient Via Casilina, on the outskirts of Rome, in a landscape of hills and vineyards between the Castelli Romani and the Prenestini Mountains. The Music Festival is the perfect opportunity to discover this corner of the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital and to soak up the authentic atmosphere of Lazio's towns, where the local band remains a living institution, passing on a passion for music from one generation to the next.