Theatre Under the Stars in a 2,000-Year-Old Roman Ruin: La Notte dei Poeti Returns to Nora This July
Every summer since 1983, one of Italy's most atmospheric performing arts festivals takes place in the only Roman theatre in Sardinia — right on the coast, 25 kilometres from Cagliari. Almost nobody outside the island knows it exists.
There are festival settings, and then there is Nora.
The ancient city of Nora sits on a narrow peninsula that juts into the sea at Capo Pula, about 25 kilometres southwest of Cagliari. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in Sardinia — founded by the Phoenicians in the eighth century BC, expanded by the Carthaginians, and rebuilt into a flourishing Roman municipium that at its peak housed around 8,000 people. The Roman theatre is still standing, still largely intact, and still in use. It is the only Roman theatre in Sardinia. Every July evening, as the sun drops over the water and the warm stone holds the last of the day's heat, the seats fill for La Notte dei Poeti.
This summer, the festival enters its 44th consecutive edition. It remains, bafflingly, one of the least known cultural events in the Mediterranean.
What the Festival Is
La Notte dei Poeti — the Night of Poets — is an annual performing arts festival organised by CeDAC, the Multidisciplinary Circuit for Live Performance in Sardinia, and supported by Italy's Ministry of Culture, the Region of Sardinia, and the Municipality of Pula. It has run every year since 1983 without interruption, building a programme over four decades that has included artists of the calibre of Juliette Gréco, Cesária Évora, and Toni Servillo alongside some of Italy's most celebrated theatre directors, musicians, and dancers.
The programme spans the full month of July, with performances running several evenings each week across the archaeological site of Nora and, on some nights, in the nearby town of Pula. The format shifts between theatre, dance, music concerts, and poetry — often in unexpected combinations. Past editions have paired readings of Greek tragedy with live jazz, staged Shakespearean reimaginings alongside Sardinian folk music, and brought world-class blues musicians to sit in the open air where Roman audiences once sat for exactly the same reason: to be moved.
The 2025 edition — the 43rd — gives a sense of the range. The programme included a new Hamlet project by Valentino Mannias, winner of Italy's Premio Ubu for best actor under 35; a tribute to Sergio Atzeni, one of Cagliari's greatest writers, performed by Valerio Aprea; a staging of Antigone directed by Gabriele Vacis, one of Italy's most respected theatre directors; and a closing concert by The Kings of Blues featuring Grammy-winning pianist Kenny "Blues Boss" Wayne alongside musicians from the bands of James Brown and B.B. King. All of it performed at night, in an open-air Roman theatre, with the Mediterranean visible beyond the stage.
The 2026 programme has not yet been announced. It will be.
The Setting
No description of La Notte dei Poeti is complete without dwelling on where it takes place.
The Roman theatre of Nora was built in the first century AD, with a semicircular cavea that could seat up to 1,200 spectators and originally sat against the natural slope of the hill. Today, roughly half its original height survives, but its state of preservation is remarkable — well-preserved enough to still function as a performance space, which it has done continuously since the festival began in 1983. The stage faces south and west. In July, performances begin around 9pm, after sunset, when the stone has cooled slightly and the sky shifts through the last gradations of Mediterranean blue.
Around the theatre, the rest of Nora is still being excavated. Ancient streets, thermal baths with intact mosaic floors, the ruins of temples and aristocratic villas, the remains of a Phoenician necropolis — all of it visible, all of it stretching toward the sea on three sides. Part of the ancient city now lies submerged beneath the water, visible to snorkellers in the bay. It is a place where the depth of time is genuinely palpable, and where a performance on the old Roman stage carries a particular weight that no purpose-built venue can replicate.
Why It Deserves to Be on Your Summer Radar
In a year when Sardinia has been named Lonely Planet's only European destination in Best in Travel 2026, and with the island receiving more international attention than perhaps any time in recent memory, La Notte dei Poeti is precisely the kind of discovery that rewards the visitor who looks beyond the well-mapped.
It is not an obscure local event. The artists are world-class, the production values are high, and the festival has been running for 44 years under consistent artistic direction. But it operates almost entirely within Italian cultural circuits — it is well-known in Cagliari and in the Italian theatre world, and almost entirely unknown to the international visitors who are now arriving in growing numbers.
Tickets for individual evenings cost around €20. A shuttle bus runs from Cagliari's Piazza Matteotti to Nora and back, departing at 18:30, for around €12 return — a practical and pleasant option for anyone without a car. The archaeological site itself is open during the day for visits, making Nora an easy and rewarding full day trip: explore the ruins in the afternoon, stay for the show in the evening.
The 44th edition of La Notte dei Poeti opens in July 2026. Book the shuttle. Stay for the show. You will not find another setting like it.
Sources: La Notte dei Poeti official website (lanottedeipoeti.it); CeDAC Sardegna (cedacsardegna.it); European Festivals Association (festivalfinder.eu); Archaeology Travel (archaeology-travel.com); Sardinia Bella (sardiniabella.com); SardegnaTurismo (sardegnaturismo.it); History Hit (historyhit.com); Kalaritana Media.
