Volterra AD 1398 A medieval pageantry

Pubblicato il 19 Agosto 2011 da Genni

Volterra

The alabaster Etruscan town of Volterra, commune of Pisa, is turning medieval from the 21st to the 28th August. From daybreak to nightfall Volterra will be animated by fiery warhorses, fearless knights, noblemen and ladies, artisans and merchants, common people and peasants, flag-wavers and crossbowmen, musicians and jesters. The climax of the programme is the “Festival Day of AD 1398”.

The town centre will come to life with a never-ending past, rich colourful performances and music.  Under the shade of the Medici Fortress will be a military camp where visitors can enjoy performances with arms and falconry, while in the Archaeological Park medieval country life returns with a village of peasant farmers, courtyard  animals, shepherds, the monastery and its monks. Two distinct environments from which to chose from.

To make everything more realistic, Volterra in those days will (re)introduce the ‘Grosso’, the currency circulating during the Middle Ages. Food, wine and handicrafts may only be purchased with these coins, available at the ‘Old Exchange Office’.

A unique occasion to experience, as if by magic, medieval times in one of the most beautiful towns in Tuscany. Volterra, in fact, lies in the Chianti Pisano and borders with other Chianti towns belonging to both Florence and Siena. It is thus surrounded by beautiful rolling hills covered in vineyards upon which it dominates from its over 500 metres of altitude. Tuscany Holiday Rent offers a wide selection of holiday homes in the area of Pisa from which to choose for your holidays.

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Let ‘Em Roll Baby!

Pubblicato il 18 Agosto 2011 da Genni

Montepulciano

Majestically perched on one of the hills of the breathtaking Valdichiana is the medieval and Renaissance town of Montepulciano, well-known for its fabulous wine. Its Vino Nobile is considered by wine connoisseurs among the best Italian wines. Tuscany Holiday Rent offers a wide selection of holiday accommodations in the Valdichiana. Well, from Friday 19th August until Sunday 28th Montepulciano is going to be rolling its wine casks around town!

Precisely tomorrow is starting the Bravio delle Botti, that is the Cask Banner, a traditional challenge, which each year sees the 8 quarters of town (Cagnano, Collazzi, Le Coste, Gracciano, Poggiolo, San Donato, Talosa and Voltaia) compete for the conquest of the Bravium, the magnificent painted banner with the iconographic image of the patron Saint of town, St. John the Beheaded. The competition itself consists in rolling up hill a 80kg cask! The two athletes (how else can we call them?) pushing the cask are unambiguously called ‘pushers’ and have to cover the main streets of the historical centre of town until arriving in the main square in front of the Cathedral.

Actually the race itself only takes place on Sunday 28th, but Montepulciano has many events in store for the many visitors arriving in this period of the year. Tomorrow the town starts with “Cantine in Piazza”, in other words Cellars in the Square, with wine tasting organized by the Consorzio del Vino Nobile right in the Cathedral Square. Saturday proceeds with the beginning of the celebrations. Flag-wavers, drummers and a historical pageant will wind along the streets of Montepulciano until the top where the Gonfaloniere, a highly prestigious communal post in medieval and Renaissance Italy, will make his speech.

On Sunday 21st the flag-wavers and drummers will again go along the roads for the presentation of the banner. The afternoon concludes with the gourmet cuisine prize giving of  “Dinner with Nobile”.

From Sunday to Friday 26th visitors will be able to observe the various evening trials of the ‘pushers’ and each of the eight quarters will hold their propitiatory dinners. On Thursday the 25th the historic centre will see the pageant of the Candle Procession in the striking atmosphere of the town streets only lit by tapers and torches. Obviously the flag-wavers and drummers will be joining up!

As forewarned the Cask race is on Sunday 28th and concludes, needless to say, with flag-waving and drumming. Ten days of fun, events and wine in one of the most beautiful towns of Tuscany.

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The Time it takes to listen to Time

Pubblicato il 16 Agosto 2011 da Genni

The Crete Senesi

The centre of Tuscany treasures a particular area whose landscape seems nearly lunar. This region is known as the Crete Senesi, ‘Siennese Clays’, due to the distinctive grey colouration the clay here gives to the soil, sediments from over 3 million years ago. Once inhospitable and barren, today this spectacular scenery  offers charming eroded hill ranges where the furrows produced by wash, the ‘calanchi’, alternate with the bare white outcrop sediments, the ‘biancane’, and where the cypresses and the pine trees line the lanes and surround the farmhouses as protection against the wind. Seasons here are kaleidoscopic, each with its shade of colour, enhanced by the starkness of the land, mixed with the gray of clay, the green of grain fields and the yellow of wheat.  For this reason in the last years, in response to the many tourists who have started to converge here, farmhouses have been converted to offer holiday accommodations in the Crete Senesi. The region offers many attractions such as beautiful Etruscan hilltop villages and the 14th century Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore but also organizes interesting events such as the upcoming Festival delle Crete Senesi.

Among the furrows and the white outcrops a tiny theatrical oasis is about to arise with its tales sung, played, recited as well as screened. From August 18th to the 26th the traditional appointment with the Festival of the Crete Senesi, now at its 11th edition, returns and this time with Italian theatre director Flavio Albanese. As always the Festival includes meetings with international artists who will bestow emotions to visitors in the enchanting scenery offered by the villages that stud the hillsides.

This season’s preferred artistic form with be theatre, but with an approach to young people, families and also children. This permits the public to participate, in a light and poetic way, to moments of social, human and cultural deepening. A tiny oasis that sets a theatrical course as a source of different techniques of storytelling, to serve the necessities of man to tell his stories to other people: circus, music, puppets and videos.

Rapolano Terme

On the 18th August the Festival kicks off at Montisi where “The Tortoise Dream – an African Story” will be staged with puppets and African music.  Following on the 23rd at Rapolano Terme “Beniamino, the Gangster  Gentleman”, freely inspired by “My Soul’s Land” by Italian dramatist and writer Massimo Carlotto, it is the story of smuggling and robberies between Lebanon, Malta, Venice, Spain and Croatia. Surrounded by friendship, betrayed love and political passions the tale is both harsh, as a criminal’s life is, and amusing, because Beniamino Rossini is a gifted and brave man who draws from passion the relish and the art to invent life.

Buonconvento

The event proceeds on the 24th at Buonconvento with “Revolution” a show that recounts the Sixties, from The Beatles to Yuri Gagarin, with an assortment of music, songs, emotions and the real-life story of a young Italian woman from the south. Ten years that shook the world culminating with the first human being setting his foot on the moon.

Monteroni d'Arbia

On the 25th at Monteroni d’Arbia will make the scene “Makeda and the acrobatic escape from the ark”. For the first time in Italy the Ethiopian Circensian Company Fekat consisting of young African artists: musicians, acrobats, jugglers, professional dancers and contortionists. They will narrate the secrets and myth of the Queen of Sheba (Makeda in Ethiopia) and the Ark of the Covenant carried around about 900 years BC from Israel to Ethiopia. A new creative fantasy imbued with the consciousness of belonging to such a noble civilization.

Concluding on the 26th at Asciano “The Story of a Seagull and the Cat who taught Her to Fly”, from Luis Sepulveda’s famous tale a video narration where the narrator is the camera’s closed circuit eye.

This year’s edition of the Festival delle Crete Senesi is undoubtedly more intimate. Something to share with both family and friends. Consecrated to the time you have to share with them. “The Time it takes to listen to Time”.

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The Palio of Siena

Pubblicato il 14 Agosto 2011 da Beppe

These days many visitors are coming to Siena because of the Palio, a historical, unique festival, a horse race run in Siena main square, Piazza del Campo. It is a show of colors and high emotions, ending up in the victory of one of the 10 neighborhoods, called contrade.

The Palio is run twice a year, one on July the second ,called Palio di Provenzano dedicated to the Madonna of Provenzano and the other Palio dell’Assunta  in honour of the Assumption of Mary, Christ’s mother.

Yesterday, Saturday, August  the13th, 2011 Siena officially started the Palio dell’Assunta. The horses were assigned by draw to the 10 neighborhoods. On the 16th of August the race day will be starting with a special  mass blessing the horses and in the afternoon a pageant, streaming through the very heart of the town will  end up in the Piazza del Campo. Each contrada wears its traditional costumes and a performance of flag throwers follows.

 The clue of the festival is, of course, the run itself. The bareback jockeys ride the track three times for about 90 seconds. They are allowed to use their whip to stir the horse up or even to disturb the other horses and riders. That’s the controversial point often focused in the passionate debates by animalists who, rightly or wrongly, side against this festival without considering the history of the town. Sometimes the jockeys themselves are thrown off their horses and it can happen that the animal alone can reach the victory un mounted. The award is a silk banner, called drappellone, painted by an artist for the occasion which becomes a symbolic property to be jealously garded by the contradaioli.

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The BBC has chosen Lucca as the most romantic place to spend one’s holidays.

Pubblicato il 9 Agosto 2011 da Beppe

Lucca has become very trendy  for holidaymakers in the first half of 2011. The visitors have highly increasead in percentage terms (10%). The reason is that D’Annunzio’s arborato cherchio (the tree-lined circular  shape of the town) has kept its treasures far from inattentive eyes. The mysteries of Lucca deserve attention, care of details. Strolling along the narrow medieval streets means walking into the history of a town which has built its wealth on manufacturing activities, basically wool, silk and banking. Incredibly, at the end of the 14th century, Lucca, economically dominant, was able to finance the wars of  European sovereigns. On the eve of the age of free communes it competed with Florence, Pisa and Siena but unlike them it  confirmed its  future vocation, the independence from Florence, an attitude which was to last up to the arrival of the French troops of Napoleon in 1799. Like an old lady, proudly aware of her glorious past,  Lucca has never paid attention to the economical allures of globalization. The shadowy walls have safely protected it. Thence its untouched and never-ending charm. The visitor can’t be not enthralled by the marble laces of San   Michele al Foro or the Cathedral San Martino. Inside the sarcophagus of Ilaria Del Carretto by Iacopo  Della Quercia. Here John Keats, the English romantic poet, in front of this masterwork, rapt in  reverie, might have dedicated to the young lady the same closing line A thing of beauty is a joy for ever he actually wrote for the Grecian Urn.

Lucca is not only a must for art holidays but something more. The2011 Summer Festival, attended by 60,000 visitors has hosted artists such as Elton John, Joe Cocker, B.B King, Burt Bacharach and Liza Minnelli.

An accurate choice which has conjugated quality with reasonable prices.

Next September offers opportunities focused on its beloved son, Giacomo Puccini.

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