Autumn is here and we’ll soon the season will be to start wearing pullovers, scarves and hats again. Hoping that the weather will still be nice this upcoming weekend, here are the main events in Tuscany from which to choose from – so many choices!

Chianti:

The grape harvest has started and in some areas, already finished, and it’s time to celebrate! In Panzano in Chianti starting tonight you’ll find “Wine to Wine”. Every day until Sunday enjoy tastings of local wines and of local products. The good stands will be in the main square where you can buy a goblet and then go around tasting.
In Strada in Chianti, between Florence and Greve in Chianti, three days of the traditional “Stradainfiera” festival includes shows, markets, food and wine for three days. The festival has its origins in Medieval times and while it has changed through time, the main idea is to get together and celebrate the harvest.

Prato:

Near Prato at Poggio a Caiano the stunning historical reenactment of “The Medici Villa under siege” will be taking place this weekend. The Medici Villa of Poggio a Caiano and the entire town return to the days of the Renaissance when the Medici family inhabited the villa. There will be characters in costume, concerts, food and wine, as well as an antiques market.

Volterra:

On Sunday, September 18 you can enjoy the Notte Rossa, or Red Night, a night festival of culture, art and tastings of local products. The entire town has organized something to share their beloved town with visitors, from free guided tours of the main museums and monuments to wine and food tastings, all with good live music throughout the medieval town.

There are many events across Tuscany and I would love to be able to attend them all. Since this isn’t possible for now, I’ll have to make some decisions of where to head to and wish you a nice weekend wherever you choose to go!

Finally It’s Summer!

Yes! Finally it’s hot and since I’m 100% Florentine this weekend I go to the coast. In addition this weekend take place the Blue Night from Livorno to Piombino.

For all weekend there are guided tours, concerts and lots of events all along the Tyrrhenian coast, called from Livorno to Piombino the Etruscan Coast. I intend to be in Livorno on Saturday late morning, before 11 am because I’d like to take the tour of fossi by boat (fossi are the water canals built by the Medici to defend the city). Next I have walk by the sea and take some picture to the stunning Mascagni Terrace. Of course I want to take some sun and turn red before dinner. Before dinner I want to visit the Giovanni Fattori Museum, who is one of my favorite Tuscan painter. Then I go near Castiglioncello to Caletta where there is the annual Festa del Pesce (Festival of Seafood). It’s a nice festival on the beach where you can taste good fried fish cooked in a huge frying-pan. The night ends with lovely and romantic fireworks.

On Sunday I go to Castagneto Carducci and Bolgheri that are so beautiful. I like them because they have a fascinating medieval look but the flavor of saltiness. In Castagneto there the House-Museum of Italian Poet Giosuè Carducci, who described the spectacular cypresses of Bolgheri that need to be pictured! After lunch I head towards Florence and stop in Volterra where I want to visit the local Picture Gallery and Civic Museum displaying a remarkable Deposition by Pontormo, which stroked me the first time I saw it few years ago.

So for this weekend in Tuscany I plan relax and good food along the coast.

While it hasn’t been made official yet, the word is out that New Moon, the second Twilight sequel, will not be shot in Volterra as we had reported earlier. Twilight fans and locals are very disappointed, but it seems the production is being “realistic” and saying a town the size of Volterra cannot accommodate all of the filming crew.

Some scenes will still be shot in Volterra (piazza and palazzo dei Priori) but most on-location shots will occur in Montepulciano, another medieval Tuscan hilltop village about an hour away also deemed “more beautiful” for filming.

Montelpulciano is a charming town which we like and highly recommend visiting, but if size matters, Montelpulciano’s medieval center is actually smaller than Volterra’s! Both are beautiful in their own right but more importantly, since Stephanie Meyer’s book is set in and the Volturis family comes from Volterra, fans wanted to see Volterra on the big screen. If you’re coming all the way to Tuscany to shoot on location, does it make sense to not shoot in the actual town which is less than an hour away?

I suppose in the world of movies, anything is possible. Maybe any medieval town is the same as the next one?? Like I said, the announcement has not yet been made officially so we could still be pleasantly surprised. What do you think?

The tiny medieval village of Volterra in central Tuscany will be the setting for the shooting of “New Moon“, the second chapter of the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer. As I read in a recent article on Variety Magazine , Eagle Pictures announced that the cast would move to Volterra for the shootings for the movie for a couple of weeks, most likely in May.

Many movies have been filmed in Tuscany, the last ’007 movie “Quantum of Solace” comes to mind as one of the latest. That film was partially set in Siena during the Palio horse race days (read our article of the Palio in Siena) . I was wondering, however, why would they choose Volterra for  “New Moon”? The answer is easy for “Twilight” fans but not everyone knows that Stephanie Meyer’s books have one of the most powerful vampire families, the Volturis, come from Volterra and thus an important part of the story is set in this Tuscan village.

Volterra is a true medieval gem and one of my favorite Tuscan cities. I’m really curious to see the city as the setting for some vampire adventures and I think the citizens will also be very excited about that. The “Twilight” book series have been a great success and I hope the “New Moon” movie will make Volterra and Tuscany more popular, especially among younger visitors.

The town has created a blog dedicated to offering news on the upcoming shooting and Volterra in general; check out the New Moon Volterra Town Blog.

We just got back from the year AD 1398 as did the hundreds of people that attended the medieval festival in Volterra this past weekend, the city’s largest annual event. We also got back to work after our short holiday, and that made it especially hard to return to modern times!

On Sunday August 24th for an entire day for a small fee of 9 euros we entered medieval Volterra and we were able once again to imagine how it was to live in that age.

We walked among people dressed in medieval clothes: dueling knights and beautiful dames, nobleman and peasants. It was very realistic, the people of Volterra take a lot of care in all of the details needed to recreate the Middle Ages for this festival (which is also the main event for the city), and they all looked very believable as medieval citizens. A few times we saw an armored knight or other costumed personage talking on a cell phone (you know how hard it is for us Italians to part from our “telefonini”) but aside from this we were back in time.
We almost rented a medieval dress ourselves to join in the medieval pageantry, it was not too expensive (with about 30 euros you could buy one of the most basic dresses or rent a more elaborate dress), but not all of us were ready for this step
Everywhere we went there were handicraft stalls of typical mestieri (handicrafts) like leather goods, wooden carvings, silk stringing, cloth making, and of course – being in Volterra – alabaster handicrafts. My new little owl in alabaster is watching me right now while I type this post. And let’s not forget the local food which was really good and not too expensive after all. We could taste different kinds of pecorino cheeses (one stand had free slices to taste, I visited it at least 10 times, then they started hiding the cheese as I approached..). The necci were also a pleasant surprise (a flatbread made with chestnut flour cooked in a hot, two-sided griddle, filled with ricotta), and we tried different kinds of focaccine, sweet or salty. There was also a lot of grilled meat that filled the air with its aroma around lunch and dinner time..

Then there were the many medieval-themed attractions. The flag throwers were really good, with several companies in addition to the Volterra one. It is definitely easy to see that in Tuscany there is a great school that prepares the next generations of flag throwers. During the evening there was an historical crossbow shooting tournament. Crossbow is a fascinating weapon and the crossbowmen were so good that they basically never missed the target: it was almost boring! The knight duels were probably interesting as well but unfortunately we missed most of them.
Jugglers, jesters and wandering entertainers alternated jokes with amazing acrobatic feats. We enjoyed the shows of I Giullari di Davide Rossi, which mixed good demonstrations of ability and participation by the public. Messer Lurinetto whose specialty is playing with words, was able to improvise rhymes and jokes, both during his shows and while presenting the crossbow tournament.

Music is usually one of the main attractions for me at this kind of festivals: you often get the chance to get to know some really good musical groups whose work is influenced by sounds of this period. In this edition of Volterra AD 1398 there were several bands specialized in medieval music, they were all good, each with its own style: from the more serious and historically accurate “La Rossignol“  that performs court dances to the engaging and entertaining La Giostra (of which we will soon provide some video). This time we also discovered the Barbarian Pipe Band, a group that relies only on pipes and drums to deliver some powerful, rhythmic music inspired by medieval themes. For those who knew a few steps or were willing to learn, La Rossignol provided the chance to participate in a courtly dance with partners in the middle of the square.

With so many interesting attractions it was a real shame that the program that they gave us was not detailed at all. This year, for the first time, the location of the festival was outside the main historical streets of Volterra, in two of the parks still within the city walls. It was a wonderful location, especially the Parco di Fiumi, but the festival extended over a large area. The program was very vague and failed to tell people what exactly was being planned where and at what time, and even if we asked for more details at the information tables, we weren’t able to receive any. This way we often ended up wandering (and walking several kilometers) looking for a specific show (we missed La Giostra 2 times out of 3, even if we were looking for them!), and this in the end was frustrating both for the people and for the artists who said at times they had really small audiences. We really hope that next year the festival’s organizational committee can provide a much more detailed program, or at least go back to the original location inside the city that made it easier to wander and find the performers.

Apart from the ambiguity of the program, the Volterra medieval pageant was interesting and fun, both for those who, like me, are intrigued by the Middle Ages, and for those who just wanted to spend a day having fun and eating good food.