Sketching at FAI Marathon

I’m glad to write this post after a long silence because I just spent a wonderful Sunday volunteering at the FAI Marathon in Trieste.

But let’s start with few information. FAI is the acronym of Fondo Ambiente Italiano, an Italian Foundation that since 1975 is dedicated to save, restore and open to the public important venues of the artistic and naturalistic Italian heritage.

It is nowadays present all over Italy and it organizes every year several cultural event to disclose the beauty of our country thanks to the help of the volunteers that dedicate their time and passion to save Italian heritage through knowledge and valorization.

One of the two main events is organized in fall and it is called the FAI Marathon, managed by the FAI Giovani, the younger group of FAI Volunteers. On October 16th, 2016 3.500 volunteers opened and explained to the public over 600 venues in 150 city in Italy.

In Trieste this year marathon was dedicated to the roots of Trieste “Dalla Triade Capitolina al Colle di San Giusto“, from the roman period to the medioeval years and the cult of San Giusto.

The venues in Trieste were:

• Orto Lapidario
• Lapidario Tergestino
• Battistero di San Michele
• Campanile di San Giusto

In each venue the volunteers took the almost 1000 visitors on several  tours touching all the eras of Trieste development. It was a great experience to feel the vivid descriptions and narrations of the volunteers and to discover part of my city that I didn’t know about.

Also I was very glad to organize in collaboration with FAI Giovani Friuli Venezia-Giulia and Trieste Sketchers a sketchcrawl in the places of the marathon. A group of sketchers met in the morning and spent the day drawing those discoveries on their sketchbooks and the results were amazing. A mix of techniques, colors and textures that made the day so much more vivid. It is incredible how much passion and emotion can be transmitted through those sketches.

I am very glad to be part of those groups and I hope this collaboration can go forward and grow, maybe also outside the borders of Trieste. Definitely I’m already looking forward to the Giornate FAI di Primavera, which are held in spring, to discover some others amazing places of my city.

If you wish to see all the itineraries of the marathon of this year and the past years you can go to the FAI marathon website  , which in my opinion is also a great reference for your travels because it shows and explain many hidden places of our country.