Zucchini Flower Festival

A flower, an entire village

Some festivals are born around a product and end up telling the story of an entire territory. The Zucchini Flower Festival in San Rufo, a small town of just over 1,700 inhabitants in the province of Salerno, in the heart of the Vallo di Diano, is exactly that: three August evenings where Piazza Fontana Vaglio fills with long tables, the scent of fried food, and music, and where a humble vegetable like the zucchini flower becomes the perfect excuse to gather.

The event is promoted and organized by the Pro Loco San Rufo, which every summer mobilizes dozens of volunteers across kitchens, stalls, and event setups. The formula is the classic one of a Campanian village festival — good food, popular prices, free entry — but with growing attention to the quality of raw materials and musical programming, which over the years has brought tribute bands, folk music groups, and themed nights to the square.

Why the zucchini flower

The zucchini flower is one of the most distinctive ingredients of Southern Italian summer cuisine: delicate, perishable, and tied to home gardens and early morning harvests. In San Rufo, they work with zero-kilometer vegetables sourced from the Vallo di Diano countryside, and every family has its own version — battered, stuffed, melted into pasta, or even in desserts. The festival lines up all these interpretations and serves them in a menu that covers the entire meal.

The festival menu

The gastronomic journey is entirely built around zucchini flowers and zucchini, with some incursions into local peasant traditions:

• Appetizers — battered zucchini flowers, bruschetta, zucchini parmigiana;
• First courses — pasta with zucchini flower cream, zucchini lasagna;
• Main courses and sides — pan-seared zucchini tops, sausage and potatoes, grilled meat, 'caciocavallo impiccato' (hanged cheese);
• Specialties — fried and stuffed zucchini flowers, wood-fired pizzas;
• Desserts — zucchini flowers stuffed with hazelnut cream, honey, and pistachio.

There is also a dedicated gluten-free stand, designed for those with specific dietary needs: a detail not to be taken for granted for a festival of this size.

Live music every night

Alongside the food stalls, the square hosts a different show every evening. Over the years, the stage has featured local talent shows, Italian song tribute bands, 90s dance nights, and folk music groups playing pizzica and taranta. The formula generally includes music until late at night, with a cocktail bar active after 11 PM for those who want to extend the evening.

San Rufo and the Vallo di Diano

San Rufo sits at an altitude of about 640 meters, on the slopes that close the Vallo di Diano plain to the east, in Campania. It is a mountain village within the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park, a short distance from destinations like the Certosa di Padula, the Pertosa-Auletta Caves, and Teggiano. The August festival is one of the most popular events on the local summer calendar and coincides with the period when the village repopulates thanks to returning emigrants and summer vacations.

Who is it for?

It is a family-friendly festival accessible to everyone: you eat seated in the square, children move around freely, there is no entrance fee, and you only pay for what you consume. Those traveling through Cilento or the Vallo di Diano in the first ten days of August will find here a direct and non-touristy way to get in touch with the cuisine and social life of these villages.