Festival celebrating the cuisine of Italy’s loveliest villages
Offida, the Piceno town famous for its wines and for its bobbin lace. From 1to 20 July, the town hosts the fourth Ciborghi, the national festival of the cuisine in the “Borghi più Belli d’Italia”, a network of the country’s loveliest villages.
The event aims to make one of the most charming of Piceno’s old towns the venue for promotion of Italy’s “hidden” food and wine heritage, namely the traditions of small towns of art, history and culture often overlooked by many tourists but in reality the nation’s true connective tissue. The induction to the “Borghi più Belli” network dates back to 2001, governed by a series of structural requirements including the urban fabric’s architectural harmony and the quality of public and private constructions, as well as requisites of a general nature concerning the standard of living for the inhabitants of these villages.
The Ciborghi project was devised in the wake of recent trends that see fine food and wine becoming strong tourist magnets. The “Borghi più Belli” network now vaunts over 150 municipalities that form a real treasure trove of the culinary gems underpinning Italian regional cuisine. Offida’s Piazza del Popolo will be hosting about 20 municipalities, each representing an original dish of its own region.
Affiliation to the network is extremely prestigious and a source of great pride for the municipalities involved, with a constant focus on the elements that contribute to quality of life. In addition to artistic and architectural heritage, environment and food traditions are the resources that contribute to defining the concept of the “Borghi più Belli d’Italia”.
From this perspective also Offida is a significant representative of the loveliest small towns in Italy. In a tiny district populated by just over 5,000 people, it is one of the country’s top vineyard and winemaking locations even lending its name to one of the Marche Region’s renowned DOC labels, with increasingly popular pecorino and passerina native grape varieties constituting the most significant local products.
Piceno Senso Creativo will be in attendance at the Ciborghi event with a stand dedicated to exploring the territory, including gastronomic specialities, natural beauty spots, artistic and cultural heritage, itineraries, offers, trails!
