FAI Autumn Days 2026: from North to South, little-known treasures to visit at the weekend (there is also the happiness factory)

The museum of a historic candy factory on the outskirts of Turin, a tailor’s shop inside a seventeenth-century building in Lucca, or the oldest textile factory in Calabria. These are some of the stages of the FAI Autumn Days, scheduled for Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 October, the street event with which the Italian Environment Fund opens, for a weekend, little-known, if not completely inaccessible, places. The FAI is a non-profit foundation, active since 1975, which works to protect art, nature and landscape. The Days are organized by local delegations and groups belonging to the same, present in all regions, with the help of young volunteers. Accompanying the visitors are also over 9 thousand Apprentice Ciceroni, students trained for the occasion.

The 2026 edition is the fifteenth and has more than 700 openings in 350 cities. The visits are free of charge and every donation supports the Foundation’s activities. This year’s common thread is craftsmanship, with over 75 openings dedicated to workshops, businesses and ancient Made in Italy crafts.

From Piedmont to Tuscany

In Collegno, in the Turin area, La Fabbrica della Felicità-Leone 1857 opens, a recently inaugurated immersive museum that tells how one of the most famous sweets in the country was born.

In Fiorenzuola d’Arda, in the Piacenza area, the MAE Museum is the first museum dedicated to the history of acrylic fiber and its transformation into carbon fibre.

In Lucca the Ricci Atelier, which can only be visited on Sundays, brings artisanal haute couture to the rooms of a seventeenth-century palace.

Rome, Naples and Calabria

In Rome you enter Palazzo Piacentini, today the headquarters of the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy (MIMIT). Marcello Piacentini and Giuseppe Vaccaro designed it between 1928 and 1932 for the Ministry of Corporations, and inside it preserves the polychrome stained glass window Carta del Lavoro by Mario Sironi.

The Filippo Palizzi Industrial Art Institute and Museum opens in Naples, in Piazzetta Salazar, belonging to the Caselli-Palizzi Arts Centre, born from the merger with the Caselli porcelain institute, which since 1961 has preserved the tradition of Capodimonte in the eighteenth-century Royal Factory

Further south, near Soveria Mannelli, in the province of Catanzaro, the Leo Lanificio brings together centuries-old tradition and innovation.

The complete programme, city by city, is on the FAI website. For some visits it is best to move in advance, as at Attrezzeria Rancati, the props shop that worked for neorealism and Hollywood, up until Nolan’s Odyssey. You can enter there only by reservation.