A new illustrated children’s book is turning an abandoned Italian hill town into a real-world case study in slow, sustainable travel — inviting readers to discover, page by page, that its setting is not invented at all.
“Simonetta, Ruggero and the Cherry Forest of Celleno,” written by Rome-based author Giulio Gargiullo, follows two characters through a fictional forest kingdom, rendered in hand-painted, watercolor-style illustrations. On the book’s final page, young readers learn the village is real. A QR code leads to aerial drone footage of Celleno, a medieval hill town in Italy’s Lazio region, about 90 minutes north of Rome.
The reveal is the book’s central idea: pairing a traditional illustrated fairy tale with a modern discovery tool, turning a bedtime story into an entry point for slow, off-the-beaten-path travel.
Celleno’s abandoned medieval quarter — known locally as “Il Borgo Fantasma,” or the Ghost Town — has drawn growing interest from travelers seeking alternatives to Italy’s more crowded destinations. The Telegraph, the British newspaper, named Celleno among the 25 most beautiful villages in Italy lost in time.
The story itself is built the same way: pure invention layered over details drawn directly from Celleno’s own history. The book’s setting includes Orsini Castle and draws on the documented history of the Gatti family, a noble dynasty from nearby Viterbo that ruled the town for more than a century before the property passed to the Orsini family in the 16th century. The book’s central character, Simonetta, takes her inspiration from a noblewoman of that lineage — a detail the author researched before writing the story.
“I wanted the book to work the way art does: to make people curious enough to go and see something for themselves,” said Gargiullo, who was named an honorary citizen of Celleno in 2024. “I wrote it during a difficult period in my life, and turning it into something that could gently send families to this place, respectfully, on foot, felt like the right way to give something back.”
The project carries the official patronage of the Municipality of Celleno, which credits it with supporting a model of tourism built around small-scale, resident-led promotion rather than mass visitation — spreading interest gradually, instead of concentrating it. Organizers describe the approach as a model that could be replicated by other small Italian towns seeking to attract visitors through storytelling rather than large-scale marketing campaigns.
The book also includes a “Little Guardians of Nature” section, encouraging young readers to build a handful of small daily habits around caring for local wildlife and the outdoors, along with a hidden-object game woven into the illustrations.
“Simonetta, Ruggero and the Cherry Forest of Celleno” is available now on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HDLH32HR/
