Anywhere Italy

Feste

10 towns where the festa is bigger than the town

Comuni under 2,000 residents with a verified, dated patron festa. For one day a year the crowd outnumbers the register. 10 towns shown, smallest first.

In a town of a few hundred, the festa is the one day the demographics reverse. Emigrated families drive back, the piazza fills past capacity, and the town briefly becomes the size it remembers being.

Each of these comuni has under 2,000 residents and a verified, dated patron feast. Arrive on the day and you will not find parking; arrive the day after and you will not find a crowd.

  1. 1.MonteferranteGiovanni Battista, 24 JuneChieti · AbruzzoAt 800 meters on a terrace above the Sangro valley, a 12th-century Caracciolo feud of 106 people facing Lake Bomba and the Maiella.
  2. 2.BardAssunzione di Maria, 15 AugustAosta Valley · Aosta ValleyA 108-person village under the largest Savoy fortress in the Alps, where 400 soldiers held off Napoleon's 40,000 for two weeks in 1800.
  3. 3.Santo Stefano di SessanioStefano, 2 AugustL'Aquila · AbruzzoA Medici outpost at 1,250 meters on the southern edge of Campo Imperatore, restored building by building since 1999 into Italy's first scattered hotel.
  4. 4.Castelvecchio CalvisioGiuseppe, 19 MarchL'Aquila · Abruzzo118 people at 1,067 meters on a ridge above the Tirino, inside a fortified ellipse of stone walls with alleys orthogonal to its perimeter.
  5. 5.CalascioNicola di Bari, 9 MayL'Aquila · AbruzzoAt 1,200 meters under the highest castle in the Apennines, a village of 125 people that played the monk's refuge in Ladyhawke.

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  1. 6.Castelvecchio di Rocca BarbenaAssunzione di Maria, 15 AugustSavona · LiguriaA stone village of 130 residents at 420 meters in the Val Neva, built into the southern foot of Rocca Barbena at 1,142 meters.
  2. 7.Celle di San VitoVincenzo Ferreri, 13 AugustFoggia · ApuliaThe smallest commune in Puglia, 148 residents at 726 meters in the Monti Dauni, one of two Franco-Provençal-speaking villages in the south.
  3. 8.UsseauxPietro, 29 JuneTorino · PiedmontA Val Chisone village at 1,416 meters with four scattered borgate and more than forty murals painted across the stone facades.
  4. 9.PietracamelaLeucio d'Alessandria, 11 JanuaryTeramo · AbruzzoA village of 218 people clinging at 1,005 meters under the north wall of Corno Piccolo, birthplace of Italian Apennine climbing in 1925.
  5. 10.PercileSanta Lucia, 13 DecemberRoma · LazioA 219-person medieval borgo at 575 meters in the Monti Lucretili park, with two karst lakes called Lagustelli hidden in the beech woods above.

We write about towns like these every Sunday, one town a week, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, from Pietrasanta.

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