For people living in Forlì, the “Cervese” is the main way to reach the seaside. Each one of us has childish memories: the beach, the sand castles, playing with little glass balls with friends and having all the love of our parents just for us. Time then was a unique happy and long moment to live with no thoughts.

Cervese was once a 40 chilometers planted road where little and unknown villages lead directly to the first sign of water: the etrurian salt flats of Cervia, where flamingos stay in the summer and old “salinari” still harvest the sweet salt of Cervia.

That travel was a real happening: the evening before my mother used to prepare food for the morning, lunch and dinner and my father used to check every other details: table, chairs, my toys and so on.

Then in the morning woke up early and here we go.

But, as I am discovering very often, since I started blogging, behind every single little village there’ a hidden treasure you cannot miss. Last saturday I was invited to a performing event called Corposamente, a festival of perfoming arts, music and new theater, organised by a dear friend of mine.

A wonderful gathering of the new contemporary theater companies, presenting their works. The location was absolutely extraordinary. A renaissance well kept palace, just in the middle of nowhere, stood still in a park dominating this little village, not far from Cervia, called Castiglione di Ravenna. Grossi Palace.

Pietro Grossi, a soldier, was the representative of the Emperor Frederic the II and head of the military force of Pope Giulio III. His father, Battista, also a soldier started to built the palace in 1461. It was a real fortress with a water channel around and two drawbridges. His son Pietro finished it after 100 years and became the main fortress to defend the area from the assaults of local troups. The Grossi family was a military one, but also had some famous architects and writers who worked in Romagna. Unfortunately Pietro did not have any son so after some passages and different uses of the place (even a tobacco plant), the Castle is now owned by the Municipality.

It is not possible to visit it inside, due to security reason, but it really worth a visit, specially in the evening as it happened to me.

Here some images I took and also a video of the video performance of N.E.O visual project, Andrea Bernabini, Matteo Bevilacqua.

A place to visit, a festival not to miss next year!

Info at www.altrimenti.org