The “Festival dei Claustri”: is a festival which takes place in Altamura, founded by 3 organisations, Il Club Fredericiano, Il Curo di Altamura and the Pro Loco. But these 3 organisations work also in close collaboration with other cultural organisations (for example Link associazione).

Together, they share a common goal: promoting the Claustri and the historical centre of Altamura by creating this festival which organises several activities, workshops...

What means Claustri? First the word is the plural of *claustro .

*Claustro: a typical little or large place which opens on the main streets of the historical centre of Altamura.

Missions: Bringing cultural life to Altamura and revitalising the city, bringing a cultural open-mindedness, reinforcing the responsible and sustainable tourism (that is to say avoid mass tourism). But also promoting the European cultural heritage.

Goals: Establishing activities by avoiding to bother the inhabitants who live close to the claustri, and also in order to not disturbing the neighbourhood. That’s why, in each claustro there is a small amount of people.

The Festival dei Claustri: is an open-to-all event, lasts three weekends , and it providing animations for everyone (children & adults) on different topics, such as cinema, dance, cultural activities and workshops, music, theatre, exhibitions, interviews and guided visits.

At the beginning, the Festival dei Claustri was a small event, but which managed to become a popular major event. We want to know why? Their motto: implementing quality cultural activities and for this, they work hard to find the “right one”. Now this festival is undoubtedly recognised by its citizens for its quality, like Istanbul Pasaji by Elisa Castoro, such as pictures of Istanbul traditional places, mosques, and photos about the famous religion dance mevlena, postcards, miniature, exhibit of paintings and concerts.

Activities and workshops are organised in each street of Altamura. For all information, booklets are distributed for the people, because it’s easy to get lost, but arrows are posted to guide us. All activities & workshops occurred in different claustri.

We helping them in the preparation and organisation of each animation, for example we working also in logistics: we moving tables, holding chairs, watching claustri in order to avoid the thefts.

To sum up: facilitate the work of the crew and the staff. At the end of each animation, we helping to putting the things away and cleaning the claustri. 

We think that we spent enjoyable moments, both in the preparation and within the Festival of Claustri. Sometimes we can spend our time to go to the concerts, to see exhibitions (photography exhibition for example). One of the most interesting part was the meeting of different actors (we met a band from Argentine, we shared about our different cultures and some people were able to show their ability to speak Spanish. We learned about so many things: traditional cultural things and we had the honour to taste the *cialledda.

*Cialedda: the famous traditional day-old bread of Puglia.

We also created friendship links between volunteers, the crew and the staff are so friendly with the volunteers. The funniest part was the interview about us. This festival, is a way for everyone to discover, to share different cultures, we build awareness ourselves through the activities & animations.That’s why we want to say (Mateusz, Hubert, Miks, Daniēls, Augustin, Kasia, Özge, Oğulcan, Wojtek, Lukasz, Alexandra, Ola, Elza and Marija): “grazie mille!”.

Testimony from Augustin Minart, Özge Altintas and Ogulcan Matur  :