A good month for ‘feste’ with the grape harvest (vendemmia) coming in. The Montecarlo wine festival in Tuscany’s Lucca province stretches from the end of August into the first week of September. Greve in Chianti has its Rassegna del Chianti Classico, celebrating the harvest in enormous style. Food is never far from Italian’s minds, and September sees Camaiore’s Celebration del Lardo, and Pienza its Fiera del Cacio (Pecorino Cheese Festival). Bivigliano has its Festival of the Finocchiona (a traditional sausage), and Vetulonia its Gastronomic Festival. See too the Sagra del Cinghiale, Capalbio’s Wild Boar festival. Pietra Santa has the Feast of Wine
The lovely medieval city of Lucca also has the Luminara, a parade in honour of the Volto Santo crucifix, and taking place on 13 September. On the 5th, Lucca has the parade celebrating the Liberatinon of the City, and there is a series of concerts featuring, inter alia, the music of son of Lucca Puccini. We have ‘Meeting Lucca by Night’ with a run around the city walls … a whole month of festivities in fact.
Everyone knows the Palio (or rather Palios) of Siena, but other cities boast there historical horse race/joust tourneys. Check out the Palio of San Rocco in Florence’s Figline Valdarno. Impruneta has its own scamper through the streets on horseback, in the Festival of San Luca. Pisa too has its Palio degli Contrade, and Impruneta the Feste of San Luca, a horseback race through the streets. Other palios are in Lari, Cortona and Signa. Check out Nozzano’s Il Castello Rivive, where the ‘castle comes back to life’ with fire eaters, jugglers, music, wine, parades and other Renaissance costumed fun. The pick of these events is in Volterra, with the Astiludio, with demonstrations of archery and flag throwing.
One of Florence’s oldest feste is the Feast of Rificolona , over the 7th and 8th.
A brief roundup of the various feste in Abruzzo this month, from the traditional, to the modern, and the frankly bizarre! As ever, we endeavour to get dates right but they CAN change. So please check before you go. 4 September in Pacentro sees the Day of Madonna di Loreto, a celebration dating back to the 1500s, with the young folk taking part in the traditional barefoot race of the ‘corsa degli zingari’. Liscia has its patron saint’s festival early in the month, with a parade of floats.
The grape harvest (or Vendemmia) sees grape festivals all around, including those at Sulmona and L’Aquila. There is the grape and wine festival at Giuliano Teatino mid month. The first Sunday in September sees the Mullet festival in Ortona (fried fish rather than dodgy haircuts). A big communal fish fry in the open air, plus fireworks and live music. The 8th sees Lanciano’s Madonna del Ponte day, with the marvellous Parade of Donativi, where local peasants carry traditional copper basins on their heads. Castiglione Messer Marino has Saint Maria del Monte’s Day (combined with the chicken festival) on the 11-12 September. Ripateatina has its saint’s day, plus hog roast on the second Sunday of September. Altino has Saints Cosma and Damiano’s Day with its traditional parade on 26-27, and Forcella its Mercy Festival and Ballo dell’Insegna on the 24th. Vasto has San Michele’s Day (fireworks) on 28-30th.
Major dates in the month of September in Italy include the start of the hunting season.
Surely one of the shortest lived museums of all time, the Museum of Erotic Art in Venice (Museo d’Arte Erotica) to give it its Italian sobriquet fell foul of the all-powerful Catholic Church and a certain prissiness by the Venetian authorities. Now there are sex museums all over the world, including the Museum of Sex on Fifth Avenue in New York City, Berlin’s Beate Uhse and St Petersburg’s sex museum, which boasts the mummified penis of Rasputin. Many mainstream collections, such as the British Museum, have their own ’secret’ collections of erotic arcana, for which you need speical visiting rights. This is even the case of Italy, where the Naples Archeological Museum (the Museo Archelogico Nazionale Napoli) has the Secret Cabinet, a collection of erotic Roman art.
You’d think Venice would be the ideal place, with so many erotic writers being associated with the place - Casanova comes to mind, as do Pietro Aretino, Veronica Franco and Giorgio Baffo, who specialised in bawdy sonnets. But Venice appears to wish to live down its sexy past, with both the city and region tourist bureaux having refused to give the museum any publicity. When it finally closed in December 2006 after just ten months, the Church nodded its approval, saying the museum had been an assault on the ‘dignity’ of the city.
