September 15th, 2025 — Throughout the six weeks Group 3 spent at the Castle, the Fellows made excursions to Perugia; Sansepolcro & Monterchi to see the Piero frescoes; Assisi; and to the Alberto Burri museum at Città di Castello, followed by a visit to the extraordinary Archeologia Arborea, a nonprofit dedicated to researching and recovering Italy’s lost fruit-tree diversity. These trips enabled Fellows to become further acquainted with the beauty, art, and history that the region of Umbria has to offer while deepening their connections with one another. Often these experiences found their way into Fellows’ work as well.
Bhasha Chakrabarti, for example, credits the trip to Sansepolcro & Monterchi with renewing her passion for painting. “Before coming to Civitella, I hadn’t painted in over a year,” Chakrabarti said as she led us through her studio filled with hanging quilts, fabric scraps, and paintings left to dry. “I wanted to focus on quilting for a while, so I gave up painting. But being here, it was impossible not to,” Chakrabarti noted, gesturing to a print of Piero della Francesca’s ‘Madonna del Parto’ she had taped to the wall of her studio. “It really feels like a painting about cloth,” Chakrabarti, whose work is centered on textiles, observed.
For Yashika Graham, a writing Fellow from Jamaica and author of Some of Us Can Go Home, visiting the hillside farm of Isabella della Ragione and her Archeologia Arborea “was one of the most impactful field trips… For one, it was the only visit [we made] to a home in Italy and that’s an ongoing curiosity, seeing how life is lived.” The themes of “home, belonging, and place” are central to Graham’s writing, so her appreciation for visiting the home of della Ragione was both emotional and intellectual. Not only did this visit echo the core themes of her writing, the rustic setting brought Graham “hints of [her] own rural origins,” making her feel “right at home.”
Explore photos and videos from all of Group 3’s field trips on our Instagram @CivitellaRanieri.