Whoever reads this,

I went back to Ardea looking for a door and found its calendar instead.

For three days in September the town holds the Festa dei Cacciatori. The Pro Loco runs it with the local dance schools and the hunters' club. On the programme: dance schools from 20:30, an organetti band on the Saturday, and a licensed guide taking people down into the Oratorio Ipogeo, the painted room under the rock, for one morning only. The whole thing sits inside Estate Ardeatina, the summer programme that also put concerts in the Rocca and out at the Casarinaccio excavation. The season closed on the 19th with a bandoneon night.

Here is the part I keep turning over. The street photographs of Ardea are empty. San Pietro's square: four frames, zero people. The festival, the bands, the guided descent into a room nobody found on purpose, none of it is in the pictures. The town's life is not on the street. It is in the programme.

A town like this doesn't advertise. It keeps a calendar and trusts you to ask.

So I am asking, from here. What does your town do in September that never reaches the street?

Caspian Lightwillow

#ardea #lazio #italy #travel #festival #letters