📜 Vallecupola Story
Hi there! 👋 Today we’re reading a story about a girl named Lucrezia, who lived long ago in a mountain village called Vallecupola. We follow her as she fetches water, washes her hair, prepares food, and waits for her loved Edoardo. Together they share moments of celebration and dancing — but also one of departure, when he leaves with the sheep.
The story continues in the present, as a young man returns to his hometown and recalls his childhood and family memories. He finds out that something left behind from the war caused a terrible event in the past — and that Edoardo never came back.
This short story was one of the five finalists for the Campiello Giovani Prize 2024 🎖️, praised by the jury for its emotional clarity and sense of place.
It reflects on family, friendship, memory, and rural life, showing how even a small place like Vallecupola can contain stories worth remembering. 📖✨
Vallecupola, finalist for the Campiello Giovani Prize 2024, is a short narrative that moves between Rome and a remote mountain village.
Two narrative voices alternate: one belongs to Lucrezia, a young woman living through everyday village life in the postwar period; the other is a contemporary narrator, returning for a local festival, flooded by memories of his grandmother and childhood, and a long-past tragedy.
The story centers on the bond between Lucrezia and Edoardo, cut short by his departure for the transhumance—and ultimately by his tragic death from a wartime explosive.
The jury appreciated its rhythmic language, balanced use of dialect, and sense of historical atmosphere. A concise yet meaningful reflection on how time and place shape memory.
Vallecupola is a literary work selected among the five finalists of the 2024 Campiello Giovani Prize. Across two timelines, it combines the childhood memories of a contemporary narrator and the postwar life of Lucrezia, a young woman in Vallecupola.
It is an attempt to reconstruct a small part of a huge collective rural history.
Structure and themes
The opening is centered on daily rural gestures — preparing lye, cooking, domestic rituals. The emotional core lies in Lucrezia’s relationship with Edoardo, a shepherd. Their closeness is traced with moments of lightness and unspoken emotion.
The present-day narrator returns to Vallecupola and uncovers layers of memory — including the revelation of Edoardo’s death due to an unexploded wartime device, years after peace had been declared.
Jury’s motivation
A return home, from Rome to a small mountain village in Sabina, both physically and with the memory of childhood. To relive a season of games, but also the experience of pain: of an atrocious fate that, after having spared from war, destroyed with those same instruments of war. An atmosphere reconstructed with the most proper tools of literature: language, rhythm, suspension, skilful rendering of the atmospheres of the time (the immediate post-war period) also with measured use of the vernacular; in other words, everything that contributes to conveying emotion.
Stylistic elements
The story handles narrative rhythm, with past and present alternating smoothly. The use of vernacular aims to add authenticity, while scenes of songs, dances, and village life are meant to convey both realism and symbolism.
Conclusion
This is a little example of rural memory literature: it portrays the postwar world through personal and collective trauma, with language that aims to be both poetic and grounded. A suggested read for those studying Vallecupola geographical area and historical fiction, place-based writing and are interested in Italian regional identity.
📚 References:
- Vallecupola (Story)
- Polia, Mario. Vallecupola, la memoria e la storia. Tradizioni millenarie di un borgo sabino. Angelo Di Mario Aps. (if you want to study in depth cultural traditions of the village)
- Zenobio, Jamila. Il dialetto di Vallecupola, nel quadro linguistico mediano. Thesis, Tor Vergata University. (if you are interested in the dialect of Vallecupola)
🧠💔 This is a story you’ll want to read. It’s called Vallecupola, and it’s about returning — from the rush of Rome to a quiet mountain village full of old joys and deeper wounds.
✨ Finalist for the Campiello Giovani Prize 2024, the story explores themes of love, loss, and memory with poetic language and rural detail.
📜 Past and present intertwine. Lucrezia shares her days and dances with Edoardo… until war’s legacy leaves its mark. The twist (💣😢) will break you, in the most beautiful way.
📌 Why it’s worth your time:
- Real village: Vallecupola - alleys, stone houses, sheep bells
- Aesthetic but grounded
- Fast read, deep impact
- Feels like a movie short 🎬
🎯 Read it if you love compact stories that linger long after. Share it if you believe literature still
has
power to speak from forgotten places.
#CampielloGiovani #SabinaFeels #MemoryMatters
| Type | Text |
| Title | Vallecupola |
| Author | Daniele Camagna |
| Publisher | Fondazione Il Campiello |
| Publication Date | 2024 |
| Language | Italian |
| Object Description | Digital Publication |
| Subject | Vallecupola |
| Award | Finalist at Campiello Giovani Prize |
| URL | View publication |