Once Upon a Time at the Ciucheba, the Club Where Stars Were Born
There was a time when you didn’t have to go to Rome or Milan to run into the names that would go on to shape Italian cinema, music and television. You just had to drive down to the Tuscan coast, to Castiglioncello, and wait for the sun to go down.
At the Ciucheba you might catch Renato Zero, hear Gino Paoli sing, or watch the Giancattivi on stage — back when the trio still went by that name and its members were Francesco Nuti, Athina Cenci and Alessandro Benvenuti. Diego Abatantuono, Teo Teocoli, Gabriele Salvatores and Carlo Conti passed through too, along with many other figures of an Italian show business era that never came back.
The Ciucheba was a nightclub, of course. But calling it only that today means losing most of its story.
From September 20 to 28, 2026, that story comes back to life at the CEC – Centro Espositivo Comunale in Cecina with Mauro Donati: costellazione Ciucheba, a free-admission exhibition staged as part of Cecinema Festival, running September 24 to 28.
When the Night Ran Through Castiglioncello
The Ciucheba opened in 1969. Its name came from its three founders — Ciuti, Cherici and Bartalesi — but the turning point arrived in the winter of 1972, when Mauro Donati took the place over.
He is the one who gave the Ciucheba the particular identity it would carry for years. Alongside dancing and dining, Donati brought in live music and, above all, cabaret, making room for young performers who often hadn’t made a name for themselves yet.
That choice slowly turned the venue into something other than the standard club on the coast. People came to the Ciucheba to dance, but also to see what the night would bring.
And plenty could happen.
The Giancattivi played that stage with Nuti, Cenci and Benvenuti, and so did Renato Zero, Abatantuono, Teocoli, Gino Paoli and many others. Castiglioncello became one of the places where provincial Tuscany met the national currents of music, film, comedy and entertainment head-on.
Holding it all together was Mauro Donati’s instinct — and a gift that looks even clearer with hindsight: recognizing talent before that talent became a household name.
People came to the Ciucheba to dance, but also to see what the night would bring.
An Exhibition to Find the Ciucheba Again
It is around Donati, who died in 2025, that Mauro Donati: costellazione Ciucheba takes shape.
The show began as an idea by Debora Vannuzzi, curated by Chiara Ceccarelli with artistic direction by Mattia Mura, and was built from material made available by the Donati family.
It runs through more than thirty years of history in photographs of the venue, most of them taken by Marco Donati, Mauro’s nephew. The images bring back faces, nights and fragments of that era — and they also show a slice of Italian social history through what happened inside one club on the Tuscan coast.
Next to the public memory of the Ciucheba’s owner, a far less familiar side emerges: Mauro Donati the painter.
A selection of his works is part of the exhibition, showing a more private corner of his personality and casting a different light on the man who spent decades building shows, encounters and nights for other people.
The Mirrors of an Old Nightclub
The staging itself tries to put visitors back inside that world.
Chiara Ceccarelli started from one of the defining objects of Eighties nightlife: the mirror ball. The idea is broken apart across the exhibition space, and Marco Donati’s photographs are shown on a series of vintage mirrors.
“The space is designed to give you the feeling of being back at the Ciucheba, just for a moment,” the curator says. Those same reflections also stand for the different facets of Donati’s personality, setting his artistic path and his eye as a painter alongside the history of the venue.
The result aims to go beyond a simple collection of memorabilia. The goal is to rebuild an atmosphere, letting the collective dimension of the Ciucheba meet the private life of the man who made it famous.
From the Ciucheba to the “Masters of Tomorrow”
There is one more thread tying this story to the present, and it explains why the exhibition was folded into the new edition of Cecinema Festival.
The festival pays particular attention to the next generation of filmmakers and to its “Masters of Tomorrow” strand, hosting five directors under 35 alongside the titles in competition.
The link to the Ciucheba is almost self-evident: before they became stars, many of the artists who came through Castiglioncello were simply young people looking for a stage.
“Telling this story today means paying tribute to the history of our region, and to that extraordinary ability to create a space where different talents could meet, express themselves and become what they were going to be,” says Cecinema artistic director Mattia Mura.
The exhibition, then, does not want to turn the Ciucheba into a beautiful memory and nothing more.
“The point isn’t simply to celebrate what the Ciucheba was, but to pick up its most genuine legacy,” Mura continues. The legacy of a cultural place that worked as an incubator of talent, creating encounters and backing people who had yet to find their own voice.
That may well be the part of the Ciucheba’s story that holds up best against nostalgia.
A Constellation on the Tuscan Coast
One image in the material accompanying the show is especially good: in a land of harbors, the Ciucheba was a ship that never moved. People were the ones who arrived, crossed it and sailed on.
The constellation in the title is made of them — musicians, actors, comedians, directors and entertainers who, at very different points in their careers, walked the wooden boards of that venue on the Tuscan coast.
Some were already famous. Others would be soon enough.
Which is probably why telling the story of the Ciucheba today means telling something larger than a Seventies and Eighties nightclub. It means remembering a way of spending the night in which entertainment, music, performance and discovery could still share the same room.
From September 20, part of that story comes back out of the archives.
Mauro Donati: costellazione Ciucheba opens on Sunday, September 20, 2026 at the CEC – Centro Espositivo Comunale in Cecina and runs through September 28, admission free. Cecinema Festival takes place September 24 to 28, 2026.
