On Saturday, March 25^th and Sunday, March 26^th, 2023, FAI organised the “FAI Spring Days”, the most important public event dedicated to Italy’s cultural heritage and landscape, with the exceptional opening of more than 750 inaccessible or little-known places.

Once again, in its 31st edition, FAI’s signature event offered the opportunity to discover and rediscover, together with the Foundation’s volunteers, treasures of history, art and nature all over Italy with free-contribution visits to more than 750 places in 400 cities, most of which are usually inaccessible or little known.

The FAI Spring Days are by now the symbol of a collective vocation that animates Italy: that of the care and enhancement of its cultural heritage. This now well-known and well-established event, capable of involving hundreds of thousands of citizens every year in the discovery of their local areas, is due to the commitment and creativity of thousands of FAI volunteers, flanked by an equal number of Italian school students – the Apprentice Tour Guides – trained for the occasion.

But it is also based on the participation of hundreds of institutions, both public and private and ever increasing in number, who offer places, resources and expertise, because they recognise in it a unique and unmissable opportunity for promotion and revitalisation, and a good deed for “the most beautiful country in the world”, which benefits everyone.

Thanks to FAI Spring Days, unknown and abandoned places have returned to the attention of the public, and this has sometimes changed their destiny. Places closed to the public, traditionally not considered cultural assets, have discovered instead that they have a cultural value to be promoted and, above all, shared. This broad and transversal participation, guided by a civic feeling of pride, belonging and responsibility, make the FAI Spring Days a success.

Equally broad and transversal is the range of places and stories to be discovered and explored-hidden and undiscovered, curious and surprising, original and fascinating, perhaps right in one’s own backyard: villas, churches, historical palaces, castles, museums and archaeological areas, industrial archaeology buildings, art collections, libraries, civil and military buildings, workplaces and craft workshops, as well as parks, nature areas, gardens and villages.

“This is an important event dedicated to the cultural heritage and landscape of our country. The FAI Spring Days are an initiative that unites Italy, an indispensable path of knowledge and awareness. In order to save our heritage, we need to love it and, before that, to know it,” said Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano during the press conference presenting the event, held at the Ministry of Culture. “Thanks to the work of thousands of volunteers, places that are often inaccessible will be opened up and visited; it is a precious opportunity to rediscover the original character of our national identity and to unleash an irrepressible desire for Italy that comes from abroad. We are working on dozens of valorisation interventions with the PNRR and other allocations, unlocking idle and unused resources”.