Villa Faraldi: from Scandinavian fjords to Mediterranean maquis

The story of artists coming from the Scandinavian peninsula and settling in Villa Faraldi dates back to the second half of the last century. Founding a Scandinavian art colony here was not initially the precise intention of Bengt Olson, a Swedish artist who settled in the locality in the 1960s after discovering it by chance. Yet, word got around among artists, cultural workers, filmmakers, poets and journalists, who ended up taking up residence at Villa Faraldi. Among them was Inger Sitter, the first Norwegian visual artist to move to Villa Faraldi, and thanks to whom Fritz Røed discovered the place and later gave birth to the Villa Faraldi Festival in 1984. The artist left the village two life-size sculptures of children next to the Church of San Lorenzo, the bronze door of the Chapel of San Sebastiano in Tovetto and the beautiful plaque of the Bellavista Restaurant where he used to dine with his wife and friends almost every evening. For the summer, as every two years, in collaboration with the Fritz Røed Foundation, the municipality of Villa Faraldi has selected a Norwegian artist for an artistic residency with a scholarship. Here he will work on his works and then exhibit them from Saturday 5 to Sunday 13 July. A stay on site can be spent at La Casa delle Fate, where the Elena family has lived since the early 1800s. The house was built by the great-great-grandfather, while in the early 1900s the grandfather Vincenzo Elena started a bakery and dry pastry business with a wood-fired oven, but it was only in 2014 that the house was converted into a bed and breakfast. For a tasteful stopover, there is Roberto Gaglione's Gocce d'Olio agriturismo, a few minutes from the sea, completely immersed in the olive groves of the Cervo Valley.