Ursprung

A creative retreat in the castle of metamorphoses

Ursprung — a German word meaning origin, source, root, the point from which something is born — is a series of retreats dedicated to a very concrete question: how do you build a truly interdisciplinary creative space? From October 1st to 5th, 2026, the fifth edition, Ursprung 5, will be held at the Castello di Rocca Sinibalda, in the town of the same name in the province of Rieti, in the heart of the Turano Valley, in Lazio. It is the first time the project, born in the Alps, has chosen Italy as its home.

This is not a festival or a public village fair: it is a closed-door gathering of about twenty-five participants — artists, researchers, scientists, makers, and thinkers — who come from diverse fields and who, under normal conditions, would never meet. Half of the guests are contacted directly by the organizers; the others arrive through applications or referrals.

How the days are organized

The castle's structure dictates the rhythm of the retreat. The rooms open into one another along a continuous corridor and, over the course of the days, become a sequence of open studios, populated with works in progress and still-formless ideas to move freely among. The days alternate between short workshops, where everyone shares what they are working on with the group, and long blocks of study time, dedicated to collective exploration.

• Each day opens with a brief check-in during breakfast;
• an hour of free time precedes dinner to catch one's breath;
• the evenings remain deliberately open and spontaneous: a poetry reading in a frescoed room, a performance in the theater carved into the rock, a telescope on the walkways, long conversations by the fire in the courtyard.

The invitation to the participants is clear: bring the most difficult and unresolved work you have on your hands, the open question you cannot solve, the daring idea you have never had the courage or opportunity to try.

The castle and its history

The Castello di Rocca Sinibalda dominates the Turano Valley northeast of Rome. Built as a fortress in 1062, it was redesigned in the 1530s by the Renaissance architect Baldassarre Peruzzi according to a zoomorphic plan — depending on your perspective, an eagle or a scorpion — which makes it unique in Europe. Inside, Ovidian-inspired frescoes and art collections tell stories of perpetual metamorphosis; below, underground passages and a small amphitheater are carved into the rock.

There is also a precise historical precedent. In 1968, Caresse Crosby, an American writer and publisher, lived there, wanting to make the castle a meeting place for what she called "Citizens of the World," a borderless colony for artists and scientists. Ezra Pound, Salvador Dalí, Allen Ginsberg, Peggy Guggenheim, and the founders of the Living Theatre all passed through. Crosby died two years later and the project remained unfinished: Ursprung 5 ideally picks up the thread.

Previous editions

The project is young but already established. The first gathering was held in January 2025 in an Alpine refuge in the Allgäu with twelve participants; this was followed by "On Salon Culture" (May 2025, Tyrol, eighteen participants), "On Tools for Thought" (November 2025, Tyrol, twenty-six participants), and "On Creative Communities" (January 2026, Vorarlberg, twenty-one participants). From those days, reading groups that are still active, prototypes of tools for thought, and finally completed musical pieces have been born.

An event in the Rieti territory

Rocca Sinibalda is one of the most evocative villages in the Sabina region of Rieti, about seventy kilometers from Rome, overlooking Lake Turano. Ursprung is not an event open to the local public, but its presence places the castle in an international circuit of residencies and creative gatherings that has characterized this corner of Lazio for years.