Benevento. A new major step in enhancing the historical and cultural heritage linked to witchcraft and folk traditions. On Friday 5 September, the memorandum of understanding was signed between the Municipality of Benevento and the Municipality of Siligo (Sassari) for joining the national network “Cities of Witches”, a project created with the aim of uniting and networking Italian areas that preserve memories, legends and symbols tied to the witchcraft imagination.

The document was signed in the presence of the Mayor of Benevento, Hon. Mario Clemente Mastella, and the Mayor of Siligo, Giovanni Porcheddu.

Through this agreement, the two Municipalities commit to:

promote, in a coordinated way, cultural, tourism, educational and promotional activities linked to witchcraft, understood as a historical, anthropological and symbolic phenomenon;

share materials, experiences and content useful for a common narrative;

take an active part in events, projects and research activities within the Network.

The Municipality of Benevento, as lead partner, will be tasked with coordinating the Network’s activities, managing communications among the member Municipalities and proposing guidelines, events and shared projects, as well as promoting calls and funding opportunities.

The protocol will last three years, with the possibility of renewal, and is intended as a tool for cultural, tourism and institutional cooperation among local authorities, aimed at generating development and opportunities for the areas involved.

“With this signature,” declare Mayors Mastella and Porcheddu, “we strengthen the bond between communities that, though geographically distant, share a heritage of traditions and memories that deserve to be enhanced and passed on, becoming a driver of cultural and economic growth.”

In Benevento, on the occasion of the signing, Paolo Bellotti was also present, president of the association Intrecci Culturali, promoter of the Ammajare Festival, recently held in Siligo, the place where Julia Carta lived, a woman who lived at the end of the 16th century, accused of heresy and persecuted by the Inquisition. 

The Ammajare Festival, taking inspiration from the ancient inquisitions and the injustices suffered by figures such as Julia Carta, aims to tell today’s forms of distorted justice: from persecutions that now play out on social media—such as cyberbullying and the phenomenon of haters—to all those situations in which the most fragile are struck and pushed to the margins, in a society that still tends to blame and exclude those who are different and the last.