Tuscany Events

Tuscany’s big recurring events are old, fixed and genuinely local — several were running for centuries before anyone came to watch. They also fill their towns completely, so they are worth planning around in either direction.

The Palio di Siena

Two July and sixteen August, every year, and neither date moves. Ten of the seventeen contrade race bareback around the Campo for about ninety seconds, and which ten is decided by a draw. The four days before each race carry trial runs morning and evening, a blessing of the horse inside each contrada’s own church, and outdoor dinners for several hundred people in the streets. Siena is full and expensive throughout. The centre of the square is free to stand in, fills hours beforehand, and nobody gets out until it is over.

Florence at Easter and midsummer

The Scoppio del Carro sends a mechanical dove down a wire into a cart of fireworks outside the cathedral on Easter Sunday morning. In June the Calcio Storico fills Piazza Santa Croce with a violent sixteenth-century ball game between the city’s four historic quarters, culminating on the twenty-fourth, the feast of San Giovanni.

The Luminara in Pisa

On the evening of sixteen June the buildings along both banks of the Arno are outlined in candles set in wooden frames, and the electric lights go off. It is the eve of Pisa’s patron saint and one night only.

Harvest and mill

The grape harvest runs through September across Chianti, Montalcino and Montepulciano, and the olive mills run from late October into November. Neither is an event with a date, but both change what a cellar or an estate is doing when you arrive — working rather than receiving.

Rooms in Siena and Florence go months ahead for the Palio and the Calcio Storico, and the surrounding towns fill behind them. If the dates are fixed for you, book early; if they are not, a week either side is a different and much cheaper region.