September festivals in Tuscany

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.

 

Banca directors to take the long walk?

Could we be witnessing a ’sea change’ (sorry but we use the phrase the way Shakespeare and Prospero intended) in Italian corporate responsibility? Over the last weeks the leasing company Banca Italease went from bank to junk bank as its shares plummeted following a disastrous foray into derivatives bets that didn’t pay off. Untangling itself from the fiasco has cost Italease €610m. Now the Bank of Italy (Italy’s central bank, based in Milan) has ordered all the directors to resign. If this were the US there would be a very long trial, if it were Japan, the suits would probably opt for hara kiri, as it’s Italy they’ll probably ignore it and carry on regardless … but we wait with interest.

 

Italy and the fear of migrants

Italy isn’t the only European country prone to scare stories about overwhelming numbers of migrants. Rightly or wrongly, many Italians fear the dilution of their distinctive culture by new arrivals. An unarguable statistic is that the Italians just aren’t having many children - the birthrate for arrivals from Eastern Europe, for example, tends to be higher per couple. But wait … amid all the racist rhetoric from the right wing parties (one scarcely believable demand was that the Italian Navy be employed to sink immigrants’ boats in the Adriatic before they could make landfall), there is one uncomfortable statistic … the number of immigrants into Italy this year actually FELL. Could it be that the Bel Paese doesn’t look so Bel to incomers after all?

 

Charles Forte checks out

Charles Forte, the ‘Italian Scot’ who revolutionised Britain’s hotel and catering industry, has died at 98. The moustachioed Lord Forte made his start in a long-gone Britain of milk bars, frothy coffee and ice cream parlours. The eldest of four children, Charles Forte was born on November 26 1908 in the remote mountain village of Monforte in the Abruzzi region of Italy, where his ancestors had been minor landowners for some 500 years.

 

Stromboli rumbling

Having visited the Aeolian islands (they’re just off the north-eastern tip of Sicily) I can attest that this is one of the most extraordinary corners of the country. We’re talking active volcanoes and fumaroles, black sands, hot mud baths (a bit like Iceland I imagine, though I think the food’s probably better. This is Italy’s volcanic belt (Etna, Vesuvius, Vulcano et al) and the news that Stromboli is active again draws eyes back to the little island. Two new fissures have opened up, pouring lava into the sea. If you do visit Sicily try to detour to the islands - they’re something else.