The Tratturo Magno International Literary Prize celebrates the legacy of transhumance and ancient walking routes as a source of cultural renewal. Open to prose, poetry, essays and innovative projects, the competition invites participants to rediscover and reimagine the heritage of Italy’s shepherd trails.
Some paths are more than a way from point A to B. They carry stories, footsteps, silences, and shared words. One of these is the Tratturo Magno – the longest and most storied of Italy’s grassy transhumance routes, stretching 244 kilometers from L’Aquila to Foggia across landscapes rich in memory and beauty.
This ancient trail is once again in the spotlight thanks to the fifth edition of the “Il Tratturo Magno” International Literary Prize – a cultural initiative that weaves together literature, landscape, and future vision. The award is an invitation to writers, artists, and visionaries to transform the cultural legacy of the tratturi into stories and ideas for tomorrow.
A Living Heritage
The tratturi are not just trails – they are living relics of a pastoral civilization that shaped entire regions of Southern and Central Italy. Shepherds, merchants, pilgrims, and livestock once moved along these routes, leaving behind tangible and intangible traces: dry-stone shelters, dialects, recipes, oral traditions.
Among them, the Tratturo Magno stands out for its monumental scale and symbolic value. It begins at the Basilica of Collemaggio in L’Aquila and winds its way to the plains of Puglia, the only tratturo that reaches the sea – as if the trail itself needed the horizon to remind us of its timeless breadth.
From Memory to Imagination
The 2025 edition of the prize expands its scope with a new “Projects” category, aimed at concrete proposals to enhance the tratturi as cultural and sustainable tourism routes. Alongside Prose, Poetry, and Essays, this new section bridges memory and innovation, inviting participants to imagine an economy rooted in beauty, slowness, and care for place.
Special attention is also given to voices from abroad, with submissions welcomed in foreign languages (with accompanying Italian translations). This is a heartfelt invitation to descendants of Italian emigrants to reconnect with their heritage – to trace their family’s footsteps back to the shepherd roads that may once have carried their ancestors away with a stick in hand and dialect in their pocket.
A Trail for the Next Generation
This prize is not just for historians or heritage lovers – it’s a call to young minds, the ones who will shape the future of these lands. Only with their creativity can abandoned paths come alive again, can forgotten villages regain their breath, and can silence give way to new stories.
Every submission – be it a poem, a short story, an essay, or a project – is a gesture of return. A way to bring light to a history that doesn’t seek preservation in a museum case, but invites to be reimagined, inhabited, and turned into creative energy.
How to Participate
The contest is open to unpublished works in the following categories:
- Prose and Poetry: Fiction and poems inspired by transhumance, tratturi, family memories, and inner landscapes.
- Essays: Historical or contemporary analyses exploring the cultural and social role of shepherd trails.
- Projects: Proposals for the sustainable revitalization of tratturi – with particular focus on the L’Aquila–Foggia route – as accessible cultural itineraries.
Deadline for submissions: September 25, 2025
Entries must be sent to info@concorsoilrovo.it, following the official rules available in Italian, English, Spanish, and Portuguese at the Association’s website.
The award ceremony will take place in L’Aquila on October 25, 2025, in the year the city will hold the title of Italian Capital of Culture.
