Summer events in Tuscany

Summer in Tuscany is full events taking place all around Tuscan territory and ranging

from fair to niche cultural events.

Food and wine events and festivals are probably the easiest to find events in summer schedule in Tuscany. This is certainly connected to the excellent quality of typical Tuscan food, but also to the fact that there are always a lot of people taking part to this kind of events.

Together with this mass of small happenings, that celebrate in a rough and not-coordinated way their culinary excellences, one may find the guarantee of quality and attention to revealing the territory through events that have always characterized the famous association Slow Food. The Slow Food, in effect, have a separate very active section of the association wotking in Tuscany. 

If  you are wine admirer, and in particular if you a rosè wine lover, it may be interesting for you to know that only a couple of days ago, in Siena took place the part of the first edition of “Rosé wine festival”. This event is linked to two relevant moment for Italian tourism: the Palio of  Siena in July and the Venice Film Festival in August.

If you think, instead, you would enjoy being drawn for a few hours into a different time and place, you’d be amazed by the festival “Mercantia” in Certaldo where street performers, craftsmen and swinging music will recreate a magical past atmosphere.

Or, you may prefer “Monteriggioni di torri si corona” in Monteriggioni, that through theatrical performances, music and simple dishes, tries to recreate the magic of the ancient village, that Dante as well cited in his masterpiece Divina Commedia.

If you’re interested in theatre, you’d better have a look at the well-provided schedule of summer theatre season in San Gimignano, that combines the evocative scenography of the main square of the famous “town of  beautiful towers” with the performances of actors famous all over the world.

The “calcio in costume” or “calcio in livrea” in Florence is an event that takes place every year and is a real athletic competition, though it is very brutal, that commemorates an important moment in florentine history that took place right in Santa Croce square in 1530, where still noawadays the match are played. During the football matches the players wear XVI century costumes.

Of course, thinking about athletical competition in Tuscany you can’t avoid citing the Palio of Siena. This horse race has been considered the most important cultural event in whole Italy, and although it has many century behind, every year gets together thousands of  people from all around the world.

Music is a main subject as well of the summer schedule in Tuscany.

In fact, there are a lot of music festivals that celebrate different music styles in many different part of the region: in Lucca we find the Lucca summer festival that celebrates pop rock music; Pistoia, instead, specializes in blues music with the Pistoia blues, while at the Arezzo Wave in Arezzo one may find the most interesting artists in present Italian music panorama.

In the end, Orientoccidente is festival that is a little different from the other music festival, firstly  because the shows won’t take place in the same city everytime, but instead they will change from time to time, stopping off in many villages of the Chianti region and Arezzo area. Plus, the kind of music they celebrate is what they call “migrant music”, a mixture of ethnic musics, letting the artists that, in the course of time, have demostrated interest and commitment in integration and cultural differences. The most important international artist of the edition 2012 is Patti Smith.