L’Aquilone Fattoria Didattica was founded in 1976 with the aim of hosting children and young people for happy and constructive summer holidays.

In the autumn of 1975, Valeria and Michele began looking for a suitable location by sending letters to the mayors of the “greenest” municipalities and with subsequent visits to look for a place to make their dream come true: a holiday centre for children.

After several trips, at the invitation of the Municipality of Gubbio (Mario Rosati was the tourism councilor at the time), we arrived in this splendid city in the very first days of January 1976. It was love at first sight. We loved Gubbio, its inhabitants, and of course the villa we had been offered for rent, which seemed perfect for our purpose.

We got to work right away and, thanks also to the help of our families and many friends, we were able to welcome the first children on holiday at Aquilone in summer. It was with great emotion that, a few years ago, we hosted the children of Cecilia, the first child to arrive at our kindergarten on that distant June 20, 1976, and the children of Emanuele, another first-year eaglet, in the new Aquilone headquarters.

There are now many children of “eaglets” from the past who frequent the Aquilone today. It has been a great adventure and still is today. In 1979, Valeria and Michele got married in Gubbio, with all the children on holiday at L’Aquilone in attendance… that legendary July 26th, a date we’ve remembered every summer since then, celebrating it with our guests.

In the spring of 1980, we began organizing and hosting educational trips for schools, and in December, the best gift for us was the birth of our son Gabriele, who is now the backbone of Aquilone.

In 1983, our daughter Maria was born. She helped us manage the summer camps for a long time and still helps us in a thousand ways, even though she works in another city. In 2008, we moved to our current location—the new Vignoli summer center and educational farm, still located in the municipality of Gubbio—after a long and painstaking renovation and reconstruction of a traditional country house, making it suitable for hosting both adults and children.

Over the years, we have planted more than 800 trees in Vignoli, including forest trees, fruit trees, and olive trees. Gradually, the educational farm’s population also expanded, with many animals of the most diverse species.

In our 50 years of activity, we have hosted thousands of children and young people from all over Italy and the world, hundreds of kindergarten, elementary, and middle school classes, countless families, and numerous groups.

In our welcoming and functional facility, we strive to continually innovate and develop new projects to create an ideal place where children of all ages and backgrounds can live together in a peaceful atmosphere and feel free to unleash their creativity, in harmony with the gentle and revitalizing nature of the surrounding hills.