Last week looked like winter with its gray, damp days, but the weather for this weekend should be sunny and nice overall, perfect for taking part in an event or food festival or sagra in Tuscany and enjoying a relaxing weekend.

Chestnuts and fairs:

Sunday October 17^th – departing from Florence’s SMN station, the steam engine train goes to Marradi to the traditional Chestnut Festival.

Also in Borgo San Lorenzo, in the Mugello, there is a local fair celebrating the chestnuts, polenta and delicious Florentine steak. In Palazzuolo sul Senio there will be the Festival of Marrone and of other products coming from the woods.
In Chianti, at Abbadia San Salvatore the last weekend of the Autumn Fair will take place, celebrating this beautiful season and its products.

I’d like also to bring to your attention the nice and historical Fair of San Luca in Impruneta. This traditional country fair celebrates for an entire week its patron Saint Luke with food and local products.

Antique markets:

On Saturday and Sunday in the gardens of the Fortezza da Basso in Florence there will be the antiques market “Fortezza Antiquaria” with over 120 exhibitors.
In Lucca there will be a big antiques market all around the city center with 230 exhibitors selling furniture, fabrics, jewels and collectibles.
Piazza del Mercato in Siena and the historical center in Certaldo will also host their own antique markets.

I suggest you take advantage of this promising sunny weekend and enjoy Tuscany and wish you a nice weekend

Days are becoming shorter and the light jacket I wear in the mornings heavier. Afternoons are glorious right now in Florence though! Leaves have started to fall and the hills around Florence are changing colors, a beautiful sight. What I love about this season: the full calendar of events centered around the season’s products. Here are a few events for this second weekend in October in Tuscany:

Mugello:

On both Saturday and Sunday (October 9 and 10), you can head to Dicomano to the Grape and Chestnut Festival. There will be a costume parade and tastings of local wines and chestnuts, honey and other local products, while on Sunday there will be guided tours to the Archeological area of Frascole which is generally closed to the public.

On Sunday in Marradi you can go to the first weekend of the annual Chestnut Festival and take advantage to take a guided tour of Palazzo Torriani.

Chianti:

On Sunday in Greve in Chianti and Panzano from 12 pm until late evening the Chefs and Butchers special event will be offering tastings of typical products and traditional dishes made of meat.

In Tavernelle Val di Pesa there will be an antiques market while in Barberino Val d’Elsa there will be the Schiaccia fair, a festival centered around a typical Florentine bread, while the Touring Day celebrations include several guided visits to the surroundings and town.

In Abbadia San Salvatore meanwhile the Autumn Festival celebrates the colors, flavors and tastes of autumn.

As you can see, this weekend is rich in “tasty” events across all of Tuscany. Have a good weekend celebrating autumn!

From April 16 to the 25th the 12th European Culture Week will be taking place all over Italy and Europe and thus in Tuscany as well. The event, successfully organized by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities, opens State museums, monuments, archeological sites, archives and libraries, both for Italian and foreign visitors with free entrance.

In Italy there will be over 2900 events during the week, with over 200 just in Tuscany. Free guided tours, as well as special exhibits and events, will be organized across the region, such as the extraordinary opening of the Gardens at Villa La Pietra and its Acton Collection.

The European Culture Week is certainly a unique occasion to discover and visit unique Italian masterpieces, as well as hidden Tuscan treasures enriching your unforgettable holidays in Tuscany. Aside from free entrance into state museums, you can enjoy a full schedule of events.

The old locomotive of the steam engine train to Marradi

We took a beautiful trip to Marradi a few weekends ago, a mountain village located in the Tuscan Apennines near the border with Emilia Romagna, to go the town’s annual chestnut sagra or food festival.

The Mugello chestnuts are famous and are protected by the IGP (Indicazione Geografica Protetta, or Geographical Protected Indication) trademark and the festival was a wonderful occasion to taste and buy not only chestnuts but many local products as well. We bought chestnut flour, several pieces of local cheeses and a small chestnut cake to take home, in addition to all the other chestnut treats we had that day.

We had already been to the chestnut sagra last year and we found it appealing even if a bit too crowded! While the crowds are a sign of success, at certain moments it was hard to make our way through the streets and this made it a bit less enjoyable.

What we truly appreciated this year was how we got to Marradi: on an authentic vintage train, pulled by a steam-powered locomotive that took us from Florence to Marradi at a steady pace passing through Tuscany’s countryside and several villages. We traveled in vintage coaches, in great shape and rich in little details which added the flavor of times long past.  The real star was the locomotive, with its fumes of steam and its charm from other times!

At every stop (the train made stops to both pick up additional passengers as well as to “refuel” with water), children and adults alike crowded around the locomotive to take pictures and try to climb aboard alongside the engine drivers.

The average age of the train’s passengers was quite low: there were many families with children taking advantage of reduced tickets or, for those under 5, free passage. The cost for adults was 45 euros each which included entrance into the sagra, and while it wasn’t exactly cheap, it was certainly worth trying it at least once in our lifetimes!

If you don’t want to wait for next year’s festival in October to travel on the steam engine train, you can do so in the 3 Sundays before Christmas when there will be trips from Florence to Marradi for the town’s Christmas market. You can buy tickets for the steam engine train by contacting Sabrina Travel.