The City of Eternal Festivals

The City of Eternal Festivals

The City of Eternal Festivals, Rome has gone from "provincial" to "provocative" thanks in large part to its bevy of internationally recognized festivals. In the fall and spring especially, you'll see the best of local and international talent in some of the most beautiful venues in the city.

Art & Design

Usually held on the second Saturday in September, Nottle Bianca (www.lanottebianca.it) turns Rome into a free museum—galleries, museums, music halls, and so on are open all day and free to the public. Artists and architectures create installations in the city's piazzas and parks, and millions roam the city until after sunrise.

The last week in February, look out for the RomaContemporary (www.romacontemporary.it), a contemporary art fair designed to put Rome on the circuit with Basel, Miami, and London. RomaEuropa (www.romaeuropa.net) is a multi-venue avant-garde performing and visual arts program in the fall.

Film

During the first two weeks of September, several of Rome's movie theaters take part in the Da Venezia a Roma festival (www.agisanec.lazio.it), showing films just days before they are debuted at the Venice Film Festival.

Both widely distributed films, and indie films like The Darjeeling Limited, make fleeting screen appearances months before international release in Italy. Check out the local press or the Web site for more details.

Never content to be outshined by any other Italian city, Rome has begun hosting its very own film festival in mid-October, the Cinema Festival di Roma (www.romacinefest.org). Designed to compete with Venice, London, Cannes, and New York, the festival features international films, and honors silver-screen icons like Sophia Loren, as well as presents lectures from The Actors Studio.

The festival is based at the Casa del Cinema (Largo Marcello Mastroianni 1, Villa Borghese, . 06/423601. www.casadelcinema.it), Rome's new projection house and film library in Villa Borghese. This fabulous new asset has a library, a café, and a DVD library with 24 laptops available for private viewings. It screens both new and vintage films, sometimes in English, throughout the year.

Music

In spring and in some summer months, Rome stages fill with internationally recognized musicians of all genres.

Estate Romana (www.estateromana.comune.roma.it, Roman Summer) is Rome's most celebrated summer concert series.

Starting out as a bunch of low-budget concerts during June and July, Estate Romana now extends through September and draws an audience from all over the peninsula to see music acts and cultural events from around the world. Most venues are outdoors, in and around the city, and are often free. Events include cinema, theater, book fairs, and guided tours of some of Rome's monuments by night.

Big-name acts like Genesis, Billy Joel, Elton John, and Simon & Garfunkel headline free concerts that fill the area from Piazza Venezia, down Via dei Fori Imperiali, to the stage directly in front of the Colosseum.

Fiesta! (Ippodromo delle Capannelle, Via Appia Nuova 1245, Appia. 06/7182139. www.fiesta.it) is 90,000 square meters of world music and culture with a dominant Latin American component, and is very popular among young Italians.

The event includes more than 4,000 hours of live Latin and Caribbean music, as well as jazz and blues stars of international stature every summer, along with exhibits related to Latin American culture, dozens of shops and stands selling food and goods from all over the world, and four outdoor dance floors. Events run in the evenings from mid-June through August.

For more than ten years, Villa Doria Pamphilj has been organizing I Concerti nel Parco (Piazza Porta di San Pancrazio, Gianicolo. www.iconcertinelparco.it), a concert series under the stars and amid the greenery of Rome's largest park on the Janiculum Hill. Running from June through August, the concerts take place at sunset and last late into the evening.

Roma Incontra il Mondo (Laghetto di Villa Ada, Via di Ponte Salario, Villa Ada (Roma Nord). www.villaada.it) has grown in a few short years to become one of Europe's most impressive world-music festivals. Live music most evenings from late June to early August starts at 10 PM, followed by dancing until 2 AM. Stands sell handmade goods and ethnic cuisine from around the world.

RomaEstate al Foro Italico (Viale delle Olimpiadi, Stadio Olimpico. 06/8073026. www.romaestate.net) is one of Rome's many summer fairs dedicated solely to entertainment. Every day, from June through August, the former Olympic Stadium holds live concerts, dining, dancing, and fitness activities. Food stands, vendors, and playgrounds line the stadium grounds. Admission is EUR 6, though some concerts—Chemical Brothers, for example—cost considerably more. Concerts usually start at 9 PM.

Villa Celimontana Jazz Festival (Villa Celimontana, Piazza della Navicella, San Giovanni. 06/5897807. www.villacelimontanajazz.com) is the longest-running jazz festival in Europe.

From mid-June to early September it brings a program of everything from contemporary electronic and acid jazz to earlier, more classic styles, to the lawns of the restored baroque Villa Celimontana, on the Caelium Hill adjacent to the Colosseum. Admission is approximately EUR 8.

At the beginning of the summer, the Teatro di Marcello (www.iltempietto.it) lights up in the evening as a spectacular backdrop to a summer classical-music concert series.