It is said that all roads lead to Rome. It is a phrase that has the merit of being true and the flaw of being tired. It usually serves to close a conversation rather than to open it. This time, however, the road really exists: it is the Via Appia, the Regina Viarum, and in October, for four days, people will arrive there to see cars: from October 15 to 18, 2026, at the Tenuta di Fiorano, GranMotori is born: an Italian international festival dedicated to “the passion for engines.” The estate belongs to the Boncompagni Ludovisi family, one of those historic houses for our country. It is located in the Parco dell’Appia Antica, among vineyards, centuries-old trees, and remains that precede the carburetor by a couple of millennia. It had never been opened to the public. Now it will be, which is already, in itself, a Roman fact: in Rome, secret things exist mainly to be, one day, exceptionally revealed.
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Italy has built some of the most beautiful cars of the twentieth century, invented a way of sitting inside a car as if performing, transformed the dashboard into a piece of design and the roar into a form of national vanity. Then, with the naturalness with which it forgets its merits and overestimates its regrets, it has never given itself a festival worthy of that history. Goodwood has the spectacle of movement, Monterey the perfection of the concours d’élégance. We have had salons, gatherings, motor festivals, and some Sundays when a Fiat 500 club occupied a square as if it were a stronghold. What was missing was the place to say, without too much shame: this stuff is culture.
The organizers, Silvia and Mauro Dorigo, ask the right question, which is also a bit embarrassing: how is it possible that a country that has written a significant part of the history of cars and motorcycles does not yet have its own international festival? The answer, in the Italian way, is that we were thinking about it. We have been thinking about it for a century.
The strategy
GranMotori claims not to be a salon. It is true that nowadays everyone says this, from yogurt producers to literary festivals. Here, however, there is at least one idea: cars do not stand still behind a rope to be photographed. Inside the estate, a route of about one kilometer and four hundred meters will be traced, among hills and vineyards, and there the cars will have to do what they were born for, that is, move. Seeing a Lancia Stratos stationary is an exercise in admiration. Hearing it is another story.
The program is divided into four chapters with English names — Reels & Wheels, Next, Icons, Limitless — as happens when Italy wants to be international and, to succeed, stops speaking Italian for a moment. The festival’s subtitle is for drivers and dreamers. Drivers and dreamers. Fine. In Italy, the two professions have always overlapped, sometimes with memorable results, sometimes with a fender bender.
The basic idea
The declared ambition is to put a Cisitalia next to a plate of cacio e pepe, and tell a Stratos in the same breath as a Fellini film. Said like this, it risks sounding like menu stuff. In reality, it is the most serious thesis of the project: for us in Rome, the car has been a costume, a set, a courtyard and dream object, an excuse to go out on Sunday and a reason to argue about the model. The Vespa from Roman Holiday is worth, in this sense, as much as a Ferrari F40. One brought the world to look at Rome. The other brought Rome to look at itself in the chromed mirror of success.
The anniversaries
There will be anniversaries, because in Italy nothing exists if it does not have an anniversary: the sixtieth of the Duetto, the hundredth of the Carrozzeria Touring, the one hundred and twentieth of the Targa Florio. And there will be pieces that peek out from the press release like relics. A Mercedes 300 SL Prototype worth millions of euros. The Alfa Romeo C52 Disco Volante, which looks like it came from a comic book but actually came out of a concrete country. A Cisitalia 202 SMM twin of the one with which Nuvolari, already unwell, came second in the 1947 Mille Miglia, in one of those feats that Italians prefer to victories because they contain more romance. Three Group B Lancias — Stratos, 037 Safari, Delta S4 — that is the chapter in which our industry stopped being just elegant and became, for a few seasons, also a bit crazy. At the other end of the century, a 1902 Fiat 12/16 HP and a Ferrari Purosangue.
The judges from Pebble Beach and Villa d’Este are also coming, Richard Adatto and Lorenzo Ramaciotti. Plus an exceptional collaborator, Corrado Lopresto, the collector who has won the most Best show awards in the world. It is a revealing detail. The country that transformed the car into a form of art invites into its home those who, elsewhere, have the task of certifying that form.
There is even a diorama contest inspired by cinema scenes with cars. Miniature upon miniature. The great international judges called to evaluate the modeling.
Rome at the center of everything
One can smile at the brochure language, the “immersive experiences,” the community destined to live beyond the four days. One would smile wrongly if stopping there. Because the point is simpler and truer: the cars are the starting point, not the destination. Designers, engineers, artisans, collectors, dreamers, and even Sunday drivers count, those who remember the wind before the displacement of a Duetto.
Rome, for once, will be at the center of everything. No comparable festival had yet chosen Southern Europe as home. GranMotori does, and does so in a place that mixes nobility, agriculture, and archaeology, that is the three raw materials with which this city has always worked. Among the rows will pass the noise of engines designed in Turin, Modena, Milan, Pontedera.
Tickets start at eighty-five euros. It is not the price of a walk, nor is it the price of a myth. It is the price of four days in which a closed estate opens, an ancient road hosts modern and ancient cars, and a late country tries to make an appointment with itself. If it works, it will become a ritual. If it does not work, it will remain a nice attempt among the vineyards. In both cases, for once, all roads will have led where they said they would.
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