Le Marche active holidays
Courses and activities

We offer cooking classes at Valle Nuova. Learn how to cook fresh seasonal ingredients like a real Italian and to prepare some of Northern Le Marche local dishes. Real farm to table! We usually prepare two or three different dishes and a dessert. Our easy, but mouth-watering, recipes that will be easy to replicate at home. Our cooking class can be paired with truffle hunting or foraging, depending on the season.

The cooking class is followed by lunch where you’ll enjoy your self-prepared Italian dishes.

Eating foraged foods is very popular in Le Marche countryside! It’s not strange seeing whole families in the fields with bags and baskets collecting seasonal wild vegetables, asparagus, berries, mushrooms and edible flowers.
We will be glad to take you out on a walk to collect (and teach you how to recognize) all the edible goodies that nature provides for free. Of course this activity is highly seasonal!

Foraging can be paired with a cooking class.

The king of wild foods is the truffle. It grows all year round here in the area around Acqualagna (the biggest truffle market in Italy). In our woods we have four different varieties that can grow during most of the year including the precious white truffle. We will be glad to organize a truffle walk with our neighbour and his dog to show you how to find this precious fungus. Truffle hunting is seasonal, please enquire.

Truffle hunting can be paired with a cooking class.

Willow, wood, straw, plants: every possible natural material can be used to weave baskets, chairs and tools. Learn the old local weaving techniques and everything about the materials that can be woven into traditional or modern objects. 

Courses can be tailored for everybody: from complete beginners to expert weavers interested in specific local techniques or shapes.

In the old times fabrics were dyed naturally, mostly with plants. The area of the Apennines between Northern Le Marche, Tuscany and Umbria was famous during the Renaissance for its amazing blue fabrics, dyed with woad –isatis tinctoria. 

Young local artisans studied the antique techniques and now master the art of dyeing with woad, plants and other natural elements. They will be pleased to teach you their secrets.