Food Festivals in Italy

Hello again, happy you came back. I hope you find lots of new posts to interest you. Kath

Introduction

Italians love food, not just cooking it and eating it but the ingredients themselves. So it is not surprising that every year there are food festivals through every month of the year celebrating each regions most popular produce from the Fiolaro Broccoli festival in January to the Radicchio festival in December

Food Festivals in Italy, often but not always called “sagra,” change dates from year to year. They usually celebrate a food that is typically harvested at the time of the festival; often in conjunction with a Saint’s feast day for example there are many feasts and special foods for the Epiphany.

For the visitor to Italy who likes food, the sagra (plural sagre) is the highlight of the stay in the Italian countryside.
The Italian Sagra is one of the great joys of staying in the countryside, a part of Italy few tourists really get to experience.

In February there is an Olive and Bruschetta festival in Umbria to mark the end of the olive picking season. Here farmers parade in their tractors with their produce but there is also an octopus festival

In March they celebrate; Mozzarella, In may, Artichokes, tuna and Balsamic vinegar. Sagra del Carciofo: Held at Ladispoli in Rome, features a mountain of mammola artichokes, the round, spineless variety for which the region is renowned. The piazza (square) is surrounded by stands offering them cooked in different ways.

In June the fragrance of herbs fills the air as herbs are sold thought parks and streets.

There are also a rice and onion festivals in June.

July brings the swordfish where locals and tourists alike flock to the waterfront to sample the prize. There are also gnocchi and lemon festivals in July. Festa della Madonna Bruna is a fascinating festival held in July in southern Italy. The pictures look tempting enough to make you book a flight to Italy straight away.

August is a very busy month with at least 8 different festivals. The two day garlic festival, the pizza festival where, after sampling this famous snack you can dance to live music all night.

The Goats cheese, the Parmesan and salami festivals and finally the aubergine, beef, macaroni and rabbit festivals.

Fall is a great time to experience all of the food festivals in Italy, especially the mushroom and White Truffle Festivals if you are a mushroom lover. If you thought August was busy, well there are at least 11 festivals in September. Chilli, proscuitto, grape, lentil, snail, frog couscous, pistachio and polenta added to those first two.

Six maybe seven in October; apples, pumpkins, prickly pear, chestnuts and the piece de résistance in Perugia with the chocolate festival. Pasta Day is the fourth Sunday in October. The seventh is a new one for Italy, although Halloween is not such a big celebration in Italy,(all saints day on 1^st November is bigger) it is becoming more popular and you may find Halloween festivals, especially in the larger cities.

The only one in November is the 1^st which is the day of the dead a time of the year when it is said that the souls of dead relatives and loved ones return to Earth to visit those they’ve left behind. During these days people eat the first roasted chestnuts and a special cake or biscuits called ossi dei morti (bones of the dead) and they recall the names their dead

We end the year with the radicchio festival in December.

Tags: authentic Italian food, food festival, italian food

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