From ghost town to art haven: the dying village revived by street art

“Our community has painted itself back to life, one wall at a time,” says local artist Lino Lombardi. “At first people thought I was crazy, but I couldn’t just watch the town fade away.”

Lombardi is the driving force behind Stramurales, an annual street art festival in the southern Italian village of Stornara, in the Puglia region.

A dying town… revived by art

As is happening in many villages and towns across Italy—and much of Europe—recent generations have had fewer children, and many of those children end up moving to larger cities, turning their hometowns into ghost towns.

Artist Lombardi was desperate to find a solution to the problem facing Stornara and decided art might be the answer. So he set up the Stramurales street art festival in a bid to turn his hometown into a destination. And it worked.

An art tourist destination

Thousands of tourists now visit the town every year for the festival in July, which has seen artists paint more than 140 murals on the sides of shops and homes.

The festival started in 2017, and since 2020, tourist revenue has increased by 25%. Eight new businesses have opened—including, fittingly, an art-supplies shop—along with three B&Bs and two restaurants.

Residents of the town vote on the themes for the murals ahead of the festival.

“I started looking at the walls as blank canvases that could be turned into something beautiful,” Lombardi says.

“We never planned to be a case study, but if our experience can help other communities, that’s even more meaningful.”

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