SEPT in ASTI: Sagre, Douja and the Palio (Turin)
Hey all!
I wanted to inform the Turin expat community of the following events in Asti.
Sunday Sept. Protected content Festival delle Sagre with:
9:15 AM Parade starts in Piazza Marconi, Asti
11:30 AM Protected content PM Food tasting in Piazza del Palio from 40 different villages of the Astesan inland
Friday Protected content 15: Douja d'Or: wine tasting event @Palazzo dell'Enofila, Asti. Wine from all parts of the Asti province and more!
Saturday Protected content 15 Il Palio di Asti
Saturday 14: Prepping the Palio -- Asti puts on its Medieval attire. You can see the horses in their trial races.
Sunday 15:
10 AM: Mass and Blessing of the horse in the different parishes
11 AM: Sbandieratori (flag throwers show) in piazza San Secondo, Asti
12 PM: Official Jockey enrollment (same place)
2 PM: Medieval Parade from Piazza Cattedrale, Asti
4 PM: Palio begins in Piazza Alfieri, Asti
5 PM: Final Sbandieratori Parade
6 PM: Palio Award Ceremony
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For further reference (from wikipedia)
Le Sagre
Asti's Festival of Festivals (in Italian Festival delle Sagre di Asti), is a great food and wine national event that takes place in Asti on the second Sunday of September, but it begins, as now established tradition, the previous Saturday night, when the influx of people sometimes exceed that of the same Sunday and falls in the period of "Astesan September", which includes the wine event Douja d'Or (which lasts ten days) and the Palio of Asti that runs on the third Sunday of September.[1][2] More than 40 Pro Loco of the Province of Asti present their specialties, accompanied by DOC and DOCG wines from Asti, in a large open-air restaurant set up in Piazza Campo del Palio of Asti, where, during the Saturday evening and all day Sunday, thousands and thousands of people can sit in an old country village.
The Sagre Parade
This takes place after a colorful procession that winds through the streets of the city, with more than three thousand characters with authentic period costumes, tractors and farming tools, which represent the values and traditions of the rural tradition of the province. The parade is the fixed date each year for those who want to enjoy the taste of the simple things of the past, the characters that keep the campaign alive in the history of the customs that have their roots in these hills. The Festival of Festivals comes to life in Protected content an idea by Giovanni Borello, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Asti, in the Douja d'Or, with the intent to confer on what was essentially a wine competition, a time festive and memory of the peasant world. It was especially the gastronomic aspect of the festival, which urged the imagination of the organizers manage to bring together in one day the oldest cuisine rural and propose a large number of visitors a great food and wine festival that annually attracts more than one hundred thousand people.
Il Palio
The Palio di Asti is a traditional Italian festival of medieval origin that culminates with a bareback horse race. Since Protected content , the race has taken place in a triangular 'square' in the center of Asti, the Piazza Alfieri, on every third Sunday in September.
The first certain record of the race dates from Protected content . In that year Guglielmo Ventura wrote that Asti, sicut fieri solet Ast, in festo Beati Secundi (as is usual in Asti, during the Feast of San Secondo), ran a Palio under the walls of enemy city of Alba in order to mock its inhabitants, in the meantime devastating the surrounding vineyards. Considering that the Palio was already a tradition in Protected content , it is probable that the origins of the race date to some time after Protected content , with established rules from the 13th century onwards - the period of Asti's greatest splendor.