Lettomanopello Becomes Sculpture Capital with Giornate in Pietra

The Maiella National Park, recently designated a UNESCO Global Geopark, hosts the Giornate in Pietra festival in Lettomanopello, a village in the Pescara hinterland. For one week, Italian sculptors create high reliefs for urban ornamentation, making it the only town in Italy with murals that are not painted but suspended on building perimeters. The event is directed by Stefano Faccini, coordinated by tourism councilor Arianna Barbetta and Giuseppe Ferrante, with art critic Giacinto Di Pietrantonio as consultant. Blind sculptor Felice Tagliaferri will demonstrate his methods of working clay, mortars, and marble without visual feedback, relying on touch and memory. Participating artists include Giuseppe Colangelo, Yunmi Lee, Luca Marovino, Michele Montanaro, Claudia Zanaga, and local sculptors Gianni Alberico and Francesco Gigante. Two academy students, Giorgia Tiberio from Naples and Matteo Marovino from Carrara, also take part. The festival honors the stonecutters of the Maiella quarries, whose training fostered a local school for artistic sublimation of white Maiella stone, valued by interior design, stone industries, and art critics. Meetings with scholars update the debate on sculpture's state.