Festa Medievale

Last weekend, along with Lorenzo and his cousins, we made our way to Monttevettolini. A small walled fortress town perched on top of a hill, where once a year the whole town pitches in to throw a big medieval party.
When the idea was mentioned, the images that came to mind related back to the movie Role Models, where they all dress up and fight each other with fake swords in a forest, talking in old english about maidens and kings.

Luckily for me, it wasn't like that at all.
All of the participants were indeed in costume and although I don't speak Italian well enough yet to know whether or not they were talking in an old dialect, there certainly wasn't any fighting, nor was there space for a forest...

You have to remember that here in Italy they don't bother with fighting in forests when there are feasts and entertainment to be had! Walking through the giant wooden doors into the fortress we were greeted with a belly dancing, fire breathing trio, who had accrued a huge crowd. We made our way through the town, trying anchovie sandwiches, fried seafood cones, old fashioned wine, roast pork sandwiches, apple focaccia, peasant spice cake and peasant almond cake and watching a range of jesters, jugglers, fire throwers, falcon and owl tamers (not so sure about this one, I didn't really like the chains attached to their legs), candle makers, mushroom hunters and the list goes on...

Unfortunately I got a little wrapped up in the atmosphere of it all (or was constantly eating, making it hard to use my camera) and didn't get many photos of the costumes. But it was a really cool experience and not nearly as geeky as it is in American television!