Licodia Eubea

In Sicily, near Catania and Ragusa

Licodia Eubea was an ancient Sicel site, then imbibed with Greek and Roman culture. Today, the town is set on the top of Hyblaean Mountains, from where the view spans from the hills to the Mediterranean. Many of the artifacts found during the archaeological in¬vestigations are exhibited at the Museo Civico named after the archaeologist Antonino Di Vita, who studied them and was always attached to this place.

Licodia Eubea boasts exquisite pieces of art and monuments, such as the ruins of Santapau Castle, churches and monasteries, that host paintings and statues dated back to the XVII century. Also, the town has a peculiar food and wine tradition, which is the distinctive trait of this territory. Placed on the hill, the plots of land are especially suitable for pasture, and then for cheese making. Other agricultural resources are made by table grapes and wild pea, that has been farmed since the antiquity until XIX century. The flour made by wild pea milling is called ‘patacò’ and is the main ingredient of a typical dish of Licodia Eubea area.

Widespread festival

The places of the Festival

The Festival takes place inside an extraordinary monument, the former Church of San Benedetto and Santa Chiara, a veritable palimpsest of memories. The church, once annexed to the nearby monastery, underwent continuous transformations and reuses starting from the second half of the 19th century, passing from a sacred place to a warehouse, a Carabinieri barracks, a post office, a clinic, to then be definitively abandoned since the 1970s. Restored by the Superintendency of Catania at the end of the 1980s, it has only recently been restored, thanks to an intense physical and at the same time intellectual recovery work by the local branch of the Archeoclub d’Italia.

Since 2022, the Festival has enjoyed another prestigious location, the Teatro della Legalità, recently renovated and open to public use. This is where film screenings take place, in a technologically advanced and welcoming environment and in a place with a breathtaking view. The Festival is also present in the “Antonino Di Vita” Civic Museum, the Ethno-anthropological Museum and the Polo Culturale della Badia, all places where collateral activities, food and wine experiences, exhibitions and artistic installations take place.