Category: Events in Italy

Check out what’s on in Florence and Valdarno for the end of the summer

If you want to go to Florence and explore Toscana, just take a last minute flight and go!!! But to see what? Let`s  check it out together.

First stop during the first week of September will be the famous “Palio di San Rocco” in Figline Valdarno, a small village located about 30 kilometers south-east of Florence. It is one of the first “palio” competitions in Tuscany, which includes almost five days of medieval competitions such as jousting, archery, and a horse race.

If you’ll come around on September 6 and 7 , a beautiful outdoor Feast of Rificolona is waiting for you: one of the oldest festivals in Florence! This particular festivity is also celebrated in other parts of Tuscany on September 7. The Festa della Rificolona is also known as the Festival of the Lanterns. On this day, people commemorate the eve of the birth of the Virgin Mary, though probably the festival became an important event after Florence’s victory over Siena in 1555. Young lad and older persons take part in a lantern parade, where hundreds of mostly hand-made lanterns are displayed. Fantastic will be also the boat parade along the Arno. The festival is enriched by a large fair in Piazza Santissima Annunziata: a plenty of street performers, food vendors, music, and more.

Late September or early October at Palazzo Corsini, you will enjoy also the “Mostra Mercato Internazionale dell’Antiquariato”, a prestigious biennial antiques fair. A special occasion for  serious collectors to be in Florence! A number of other cultural programs takes places during the time of the fair, such as musical performances and galas.

On September 13 if you reach Lucca, you will join the Luminara di Santa Croce, a beautiful torchlight parade made in honour of the “Volto Santo”, that is the “Holy Face” wooden crucifix figure. It is usually kept in the cathedral, but on this day it  is showed around by torchlight. The city is lighted with thousands of candles  as the parade goes through Lucca’s historic center at night.

Autumn in Veneto? Juliet’s B-day in Verona

” O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?”. Who doesn’t know this lines? And who doesn’t wish once in his or her life bring his or her lover to see Verona, the city of the tragedy and the love of Romeo and Juliet?

You can have a beautiful occasion this September to go with your beloved and  party for Juliet’s Birthday!!!!

Juliet, the most famous  beautiful 14- in a half year-old girl, the symbol of perfection and innocence, is going to be celebrated her b-day as every year in Verona.
The city’s parties are on September 16th 2011 for honouring  the birthday of its most  famous heroine.

But why this date?  In spite of the word of  Shakespeare that put the Juliet birth on “Lammas Eve at night” (August 1), so Juliet’s birthday is July 31, the actual date is based on the “novella” by Luigi Da Porto (1531), the first writer who told the story of Romeo and Juliet.

The story of the two most famous and unfortunate young lovers who had lived at the beginning of the 14th century and belonged to two rival families, the Capulets and the Montagues reached the sublime artistic expression in Shakespeare´s “Romeo and Juliet” (1596).

After you have joined this event,  you may  go on  julietclub you can also partecipate to a very lovely  award called the “Cara Giulietta” (“Dear Juliet”) usually awarded on Valentine´s Day. It goes  to the most compelling letters received during the previous year. the prize has been organisedover the years  by  The Club di Giulietta, a Verona-based organization that answers the thousands of letters addressed each year to Shakespeare´s Juliet. Since the 1930s, letters addressed to Juliet keep arriving in Verona. As of 2010, more than 5,000 letters are received annually, three quarters of which are from women.

The day will be full of love, with parades, dances, and street entertainment.

 

September 2011 in Veneto: the historical Regatta in Venice

A magic city on the water…Venice, the dream of many artists and magnificent “signori”, an open-air museum that always stir up emotions! It is the favourite travel for all times and from all the world!

Are you ready to go in this end of Summer to Veneto? If so, you can’t miss two fantastic events that are staged in September in one that without any doubts is one  of the most beautiful city in the world!!!

First, come and check out the “Regata Storica” (historical Regatta) in Venice! It is an historic boat race, taking  place the first Sunday in September with four race categories (for children, for women, for  men in 6 oar boats, and the championship racing in boats with 2 oars).

The champions regatta is called  “gondolini”, the men regatta “caorline”, the women’s regatta  “mascarete”, the young rowers’ regatta  “pupparini”.

Why? The reason is very easy to understand, once you get used to Venetian dialect: it is because they use various types of boats  in the Regata Storica: respectively, the “gondolino”, the “caorlina”, the “mascareta”, the “pupparin”, and, of course, the gondola, the world-famous Venetian boat.

The earliest historical evidence of rowing races? Very ancient!

It dates back to  the second half of the 13th Century, exactly  in 1274, and as in the ancient time it will start starts at Castello. You will experience the joy, the history, the colours and the sounds of a traditional but much alive events that has Venice as gorgeous frame!!!

The races will be opened by a glamouros parade. In this spectacular procession you will admire splendid, elaborately carved boats with hundreds figures dressed up in gorgeous brocade costumes. And if you enjoed this Regata, just stay over till the third weekend of September and  you will love also Burano Regatta, that is similar to Venice’s historic Regata, but it takes place off the island of Burano, close to Venice.

 

Soundlabs Festival in Abruzzo: indie and beautiful beaches

Talking about a very beautiful Italian region, Abruzzo, we want to tell about a nice summer festival on the coast: Soundlabs Festival. The evnt comes back to its traditional summer dates in Roseto degli Abruzzi this year, after a September slot of events taken place last year. Our beginnings lie in the distant past.
Born in 1997, this indie, “little festival” with free entry for emerging bands  developed into the Soundlabs Festival in 2003. 100 international “big” names have taken part in this fab festival , over the past 13 years, such as: Patti Smith, Mogwai, Blonde Redhead, Calexico, José Gonzalez, Glasvegas, Wire, Liars, Micah P. Hinson, Art Brut, Girls in Hawaii, Enon, Afterhours, Verdena, Baustelle, Zu, Linea 77, Marlene Kuntz, Giardini di Miro’, Offlaga Disco Pax.

The 2011 Soundlabs Festival—the 15th edition— will take place on August 4th till 8th at a different venue respect on the other years! The usual one, the Stadio Fonte dell’Olmo in Roseto degli Abruzzi, is changed and now the events will be displayed between Piazza Dante and the Villa Comunale.
The stars on stage this year will be: John Grant, James Yorkston, Dirty Beaches, Handsome Furs, Le Luci Della Centrale Elettrica, Amour Fou, Bob Corn, Giorgio Canali, Clear Clouds and many others.

Meaning this year Soundlabs will range from the pchydelic pop of the Australian Clear Clouds to the dark, deep atmosphere of postpunk and garage rock/rockabilly to the indie folk.

In particular, John Grant with his debut album “Queen of Denmark”, (Bella Union) is a very exciting event to be in! “Mojo” put Grant’s songs within the 5 top album of 2010!

A word on the location: Roseto degli Abruzzi’s set near the gorgeous Adriatic coast. So you can enjoy both the seaside, the beaches and the sun in the morning,  the region’s great foods and wines offer in the evening, together with the music of this funny and interesting summer festival!!

So put together great sounds, great food and great seaside with Soundlabs Festival!

Tuscan Sun Festival: Cortona waits for you

The Tuscany hill town of Cortona is presenting to all the national and international visitors fantastic concerts and events: it is the Tuscan Sun Festival , an annual summer festival of music and arts.

The 2011 edition will start July 30 and it will be running through August 7. Why don’t you buy tickets ahead if you plan to go there?

The Tuscan Sun Festival will amaze you with music and arts events taking place inside the medieval town of Cortona, in the province of Arezzo, Tuscany.

This beautiful areais an ideal vacation spot. You can taste here and in the surronding the classic Italian food, with a selection  of world-famous  wine as the many varieties of Chianti.
Cortona is very popular, especially in summertime.

A daily program will experiment fine arts, culinary and wine, wellness, and local culture and history. Fab setting for the Festival is the Teatro Signorelli.

Since 2003, Barrett Wissman and cellist Nina Kotova are the curators of the Tuscan Sun Festival that creates a warm atmosphere for both artists and audience.

The Festival has then grown into an annual event  presenting prominent musicians, gaining also the production by the renowned arts management company IMG Artists.

Among exhibitions, wine and food tastings, lectures you will feel the vibrating “vibe” of the astonishing Italian countryside in Tuscany together with the beautiful fluer coming directly from the artistic production inside the festival.

 

Umbria Jazz: discovering new music and ancient landscapes

Born in 1973, Umbria Jazz was clearly different from the other Italian jazz festivals. Umbria Jazz took this music into the historic town squares of Umbria to audiences of up to twenty thousand young people, and every concert was free.
The festival had attracted many great musicians, including Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Weather Report, Gil Evans, Bill Evans, Charles Mingus and Keith Jarrett.
In 1982, the Festival took place  in the town of Perugia, exactly the town’s medieval centre. Ten days of music: from traditional jazz to the most recent avantguarde and many of these concerts are free. Every year in mid-July, though since 1992 a Winter Festival sprung up from the main festival (between Christmas and New Year in the Etruscan town of Orvieto).
A true paradise for the tourist: Perugia is twenty kilometres from Assisi and half-way between Florence and Rome!
Merge yourself with the flow of  the dancing crowd following a marching band from New Orleans past the historic palaces and churches of the centre!!!

You can see the performances and the highlight of the day at comfortable new Arena, which sits against a background dominated by the Convento di Santa Giuliana.  You will also find some events and concert in the eighteenth-century Morlacchi Theatre, and of course in the small clubs set in the cellars of medieval palaces!!!

The concerts and the jam sessions go on until dawn. While are you swinging to and forth, take your time to go and visit the National Gallery of Umbria, containing one of Italy’s most important collections of Medieval and Renaissance Art.
Look for the gospel choirs arriving from Chicago and New Orleans performing in the Cathedral or in the square in front of it, next to Perugia’s famous thirteenth-century fountain! You can find this deeply moving music also in other sites, including The Basilica of San Francesco at Assisi and Orvieto Cathedral.

Are you interested in studying jazz? Enroll yourself in the Clinics which are held at Umbria Jazz each year by Boston’s Berklee College of Music. And not to mention the wine, the oil, the food you can eat and drink here in Perugia! What are you waiting for?

 

The Tuscany Walking Festival: feeling the nature

Step after step: taking your time to stop and watch the beauty that will surrond you.

Come and visit the Tuscan Coast and Arcipelago for the “Tuscany Walking Festival“, that will take place from 16 April to 13 November 2011 in a real great atmosphere, located  in six Natural Parks in the Region of Tuscany.

Make a very slow movement around, which draws “an ideal path on a non existing map”, and many events, such as photography exhibits, birdwatching courses, and restaurant discounts close to the walking regions.

The nature protected by Parks open to the many souls who will get there, full of conviviality: the Walking Festival means 6 Natural Parks in hundreds of events,  as a result of a feast ideally capable of bridging the sea that divides the Coast from the Islands!!

Tuscany offers its beautiful “costa” and thousands of hectares of nature preserves and woodlands.

Numerous opportunities for hikers and trekkers!

The Tuscany Walking Festival goes on roughly between the first days of spring until the end of fall: i this periodo you can discover  extraordinary sea and lands and you will integrate both the desire of knowledge and the necessity of sharing ones emotions and experiences.

The festival  includes the Maremma, the Monti Livornesi and the Tuscan Archipelago.

Follow the program excursions of the Walking Festival Parks!!!

Check out the Official Programme
For further information:
Web site: http://www.tuscanywalkingfestival.it/en-GB/home.html

Address:
Loc. Enfola, 57037 Portoferraio (LI)

 

“ILLUMInations” in Venice: the 54th Biennale di Venezia starting from June

Are you planning a wonderful trip to Venice? Why don’t you go in June? It is not so hot, but confortably warm and a range of events starts in this astonishing town!!!
For example, the 54th International Art Exhibition of Biennale di Venezia!
In 2011 the Biennale in Venice presents itself to the national and international audience with the title of ILLUMInazioni – ILLUMInations.
Directed by Bice Curiger and chaired by Paolo Baratta, the exhibitions will be open to the public from Saturday June 4th to November 27th 2011 as usual in the fantastic scenario of the Giardini and the Arsenale.
The opening and the award ceremony is on June 4th.
The exhibition ILLUMInazioni – ILLUMInations will be set  in the Central Pavilion in the Giardini and in the Arsenale: a single itinerary who features 82 artists from all over the world!
This year, the Biennale includes 32 young artists born after 1975, as well as 32 women artists.
As usual, 89 National Participations will  parallel the Exhibition: a real record for the Art Biennale this year.
The countries that will be participating for the first time will be Andorra, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Haiti. Other countries will be participating after a long period of absence: India (1982), Congo (1968), Iraq (1990), Zimbabwe (1990), South Africa (1995), Costa Rica (1993, afterwards with IILA), Cuba (1995, afterwards with IILA).
37 Collateral Events will be arranged by international organizations and institutions. A full range of extraordinary art shows and avanguarde events to make even more interesting and exciting your holiday in Venice.
Why the title “ILLUMInations”?
According to the curator Bice Curiger, “as the biggest and oldest Biennale, la Biennale di Venezia has always been buoyed by an international spirit, and even more so now in an age in which artists themselves have become multifaceted, discerning migrants and cultural tourists”.

 

MITO SettembreMusica: International Music festival in Turin and Milan

 

Do you want a different vision of two of the most interesting Italian cities like Milan and Turin?

Just book a flight for September and join MITO SettembreMusica, the international music festival that in 4 years has hosted great annual showcases of musical events.

Milan and Turin are at heart of “new forms, functions and rules for a modern urban project” as we read in the festival programme.
The fifth edition of the MITO SettembreMusica lasts 3 weeks (3-22 September 2011).
According to  Francesco Micheli, president of MITO SettembreMusica, the celebration for the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Republic “have never run so deep” and “events like MITO SettembreMusica really bring Italy together in the spirit of unity.”
You will meet great Italian composers such as Salvatore Sciarrino, Fabio Vacchi, Fabio Nieder, Ivan Fedele, Francesco Antonioni and Matteo Franceschini.
From the world scene, this year’s festival edition also presents brand-new works by Harrison Birtwistle (UK), Pascal Dusapin (France), Michael Daugherty (USA), Toshio Hosokawa (Japan), Guo Wenjing (China), Louis Andriessen (Netherlands) and Arvo Pärt (Estonia).
Maestro Yuri Temirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra will be involved in  From Russia With Love series, that is four superb concerts of sublime compositions by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Stravinsky.
The celebration of Italy’s 150 years features the Italian folk music and dialects, but also Tahiti, the art of Beken and “a full afternoon and evening of world-class artists featuring Lokua Kanza (Congo), Boubacar Traoré (Mali) and the Orchestra National de Barbes, with musicians from Algeria, France and Morocco”.
You will find great names of symphonic music, fine line-up of young pianists performing a cycle of Franz Liszt compositions, for six concerts in both Milan and Turino, but also sacred and Baroque music and the incredible sounds of the contemporary music.
Great electronic music in the programme, with crossover and contaminations of various genres:  Christian Fennesz will bring his complex and refined music to Turino! And not only him!
But also a lot of jazz: in particular, in the Milan’s Breaks in Jazz you will apprecciate young piano master Alessandro Lanzoni, together with jazz legends such as Art Blakey, Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, Hank Mobley, Valery Ponomarev.
Furthermore, a tribute to Miles Davis with Enrico Rava, Stefano Bollani, John Scofield and Dave Douglas in both  cities.
Please, check the programme and don’t miss it!!
For all info:
Milano: tel. 02.88464725
Torino: tel. 011.4424787

 

Wine and art in Florence: Vinum Nostrum

Vinum Nostrum. Art, Science and Myths of Wine in Ancient Mediterranean Civilisations: that is, a gorgeous occasion to taste in a unique atmosphere wine and art!! The exhibition will be until May 15 in Silver Museum, Pitti Palace from Tuesday – Sunday (8.15-18.30).
For a full admission the cost is 10 Euro!
And  you have also to taste the Zibibbo’s cooking courses!!!!!

They are not a proper and boring kitchen  “lessons“ but, a full immersion in the kitchen of a real, working restaurant.

The students work  personally supervised by the chef, that is also co-founder of Cibreo Restaurant, Benedetta Vitali.

The place is an enchanting restaurant surronded  of Tuscan cypress, and the menu gose from fish to meat and vegetables with ingredients  all sustainably grown and raised, coming from Florence’s famous and colourful local markets.

Zibibbo’s cooking program goes from Monday through Friday. Class starts at 9,00 and lasts until lunch is served at 13,00.

At lunch, the dishes prepared by the students are completed with wines specifically chosen for each course.

Five recipes will be created completely from the beginning!

The cost ? A “day in the kitchen program” is € 250,00 per person, including lesson, breakfast, lunch with wine, insurance, recipes and a “Zibibbo” t-shirt.