Valle del Dragone Quarantino Bean Festival

The legume that changed a town's destiny

In Volturara Irpina, a town of just over three thousand inhabitants in the Province of Avellino, Campania, a bean is celebrated every September. This is no mere folkloric whim: the Quarantino bean of the Valle del Dragone is the product that restored agricultural and tourist visibility to this plateau at the foot of Mount Terminio. The Valle del Dragone Quarantino Bean Festival, established in 2011 and reaching its fourteenth edition in 2026, is now one of the most popular food and wine events in Irpinia, attracting thousands of visitors from across Campania.

What is the Quarantino bean?

Its name comes from the duration of its maturation cycle, which is extremely short: about forty days. It is sown in May and harvested between late August and early September, entirely by hand, without chemical fertilizers or herbicides. The pods, about fifteen centimeters long, contain an average of ten small, irregular seeds, protected by a very thin ash-white skin that makes them particularly digestible. Since 2018, the Quarantino bean of Volturara Irpina has been a Slow Food Presidium: a recognition that has revitalized an almost abandoned crop, increased the price of the bulk product from a few euros to about twelve euros per kilo, and consolidated a small network of local farms.

The Piana del Dragone, an unforgettable landscape

The festival cannot be explained without its landscape. The Piana del Dragone is the largest closed-drainage basin in Southern Italy: a valley-floor plateau where water collects and disappears into a natural sinkhole that locals have called the Bocca del Dragone for centuries. It is the misty, humid climate of this basin, combined with the nature of its soil, that makes the cultivation of the Quarantino bean and the Piana del Dragone potato possible—the town's other signature product, grown without irrigation because the soil already retains the necessary moisture.

What to eat

At the stalls, the Quarantino bean is featured in historic recipes of Irpinian peasant cuisine:

• Pasta e fasuli, the local version of pasta and beans, and the famous fasùli e ditalini
• Laane e fasuli, with fresh, hand-rolled pasta
• Bean soups with pork rinds, sausage, or Piana potatoes
• The traditional pairing with chestnuts and lard
• Gnocchetti and local first courses, accompanied by wood-fired bread, wild greens, and Irpinian wine

The squares and the atmosphere

The heart of the event is Piazza Roma, but in recent editions, it has expanded to other areas of the historic center, including Piazza Vittorio Veneto and Piazzetta Sarno, with over seventy stalls featuring kitchens, producers, and craft markets. Coldiretti and the Presidium farms bring not only the Quarantino bean to the counters but also the valley's finest products: cheeses, cured meats, chestnuts, vegetables, and preserves.

The stonnitura and peasant traditions

One of the most anticipated moments is the demonstration of the ancient stonnitura dei fagioli: the threshing of the pods with a stick or a muillo, followed by winnowing with a chiurnicchio to separate the seeds from the chaff. It is a technical and spectacular gesture, repeated every year before the public by the town's elders and producers, which explains better than any sign how much work goes into a kilo of Quarantino beans.

Beyond the table

The festival is also an opportunity to discover the area. The program of recent editions has combined cooking with guided tours of the Ethnographic Museum of the Valle del Dragone and the Bocca del Dragone, early morning hikes on the trails of Mount Terminio, via ferratas and climbing walls, orienteering, children's workshops, horseback riding, and evening concerts by folk music groups: a complete weekend of gastronomy, nature, and sports.

The 2026 edition

The fourteenth edition is scheduled from Friday, September 11 to Sunday, September 13, 2026, in Piazza Roma, as part of the Estate Volturarese calendar promoted by the Municipality of Volturara Irpina with the Pro Loco and local associations. Organizers have anticipated a special involvement from Coldiretti and a theme linked to the forty years of Slow Food, with a tribute to the movement's founder, Carlo Petrini. The detailed program, including times and musical guests, is usually released in the weeks prior.