Antica Experience Company

30/05/2026

Agnone in Molise, it’s quite a special place. We include a day trip to Molise in our Wild Heart of Italy cultural travel experiences every May & September.

11/05/2026

03/05/2026

For the next two weeks we are OOO and on the roads of glorious Ciociaria & Molise in the wild heart of Italy ♥️ follow us over at to share the discoveries and adventures of our curious & cultured explorers from Australia 💫

30/04/2026

Our May micro* tour groups will both be based in the magnificent Valle Di Comino [Comino Valley] of Paolo’s home region of Ciociaria.

Home to many of the region’s artisanal producers, shepherds, cheesemakers and traditional artisans as well as many culinary creatives, academics & archeologists.

We take our guests for an archeological walk through the forest on the hill of Santo Stefano in their home village for the week of Atina.

This was the site of the original medieval era village of Atina before an earthquake encouraged everyone to relocate to the town’s current site beneath the hill.

Santo Stefano was also a settlement site of the Volscii tribe of Italic people in the Bronze Age, who were settled in the mountaintops of the Valle di Comino.

Together with tribes from neighboring Molise they were all part of the splendour of the Sanniti civilisation of the Bronze Age. Defeated by the ancient Romans circa 300 BC, the Sanniti spirit still very much lives on…♥️
Cultural Travel Experiences:


* we have made the conscious decision to host micro groups of maximum 8 guests for all of our Wild Heart of Italy cultural travel experiences from this point forwards - small is beautiful.

26/04/2026

It’s Spring here in the wild heart of Italy, and we are getting ready to welcome two groups of Antica Australis guests to the ‘hidden’ regions of Ciociaria & Molise in central Italy this May ♥️ Antica Travel Co.

09/04/2026

Our focus from 2024 has been on relaunching our cultural travel experiences through Paolo’s home region of Ciociaria & its neighbouring region of Molise in central Italy.

So much so, we closed Antica Australis in Carcoar at the end of 2024 and relocated to live in Ciociaria ♥️

From 2027, we will be expanding our cultural travel experiences to include the enchanted region of Istria in northern Croatia - which shares many ancient tribal parallels with Ciociaria & Molise. And also has incredible food, wine & truffles!

In the meantime, for 2026 we have developed an Exclusive Villa package in Istria - with Paolo as your private chef. Details coming soon….
Follow our travel adventures >>

22/03/2026

It’s been a year since we arrived in Ciociaria, exhausted from working a month-long festival in the UAE after packing up our lives and closing our restaurant in Australia.

We arrived with no expectations. We could hardly spell our own names. We had 6 weeks to find a home and organise Kelly’s Italian residency before welcoming our first guests for the year.

We did it. We made it through.

A very special thank you to & his partner Gaynor of who welcomed us in out of the cold on the wet March evening we arrived - they gave us a beautiful, safe place to stay and plied us with local wine & handmade cheese 🍷 🧀 restorative!

A year of transition. A welcome sabbatical full stop, closing previous chapters so we can continue writing our story.
Thanks for following us through all the adventures. We suspect there will be many more 😍 Kelly & Paolo

19/03/2026

MORE ANTICA NOSTALGIA :: it’s now been a year since we presented our final performance of Antica Australis in the evocative Emirati pearling village of Al Jazeera Al Hamra 🤍

We presented Antica Australis for three consecutive years from 2023-2025 as part of the Ras Al Khaimah Art Festival, hosting guests from all over the world.

The most beautiful thing about it: discovering that the Antica experience of soul food + storytelling resonated with cultural explorers globally.

A talisman we placed in our pockets to carry with us forever.

Eid Mubarak to all of our UAE friends ###

Paolo & Kelly

15/03/2026

Antica Australis resonated on the frequency of JOY.

In both of our unique venues in the heritage villages of Carcoar and Al Jazeera Al Hamra.

A joyful celebration of culture, cuisine and community - the Antica Australis format was a singular presentation of cooking in local context in a magical liminal space.

It was a performance. The kitchen flowed onto the floor: with stories behind our daily experiences of hand-sourcing local produce, tales of eccentric suppliers, the history behind ancient dishes & Paolo’s home region of Ciociaria in central Italy, the inspiration behind carefully created dishes for the places we were in, and sometimes the most fun of all - swapping stories of previous guests’ reactions to the dishes.

And sometimes we just made stuff up.

We have been on the search for the last 12 months for the location of our next culinary adventure.

We think we’ve found an interim solution for this year. More details soon 🤗 thanks for staying with us x

Paolo & Kelly
Photo montages by Shani Nottingham Rare Pear Studio