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Local Italy
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Local Italy
What's on in Italy: 11 unmissable events to look forward to this summer
Arena Opera Festival, Verona - June 13th-September 6th Every year the Verona Arena, an ancient Roman amphitheatre built in 30 AD, hosts one of Italy's most prestigious opera festivals. The festival celebrated its centenary in 2023, one hundred years after the first performance of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida was staged within its walls, and shows no signs of slowing down. This season opera buffs will have the opportunity to see performances of Nabucco, Carmen, Rigoletto and Carmina Burana, among other classics. You can find the full 2025 calendar here. Luminara of San Ranieri, Pisa - June 16th The Tuscan city of Pisa celebrates its patron saint's day by lighting up dozens of buildings with a magical display consisting of over 100,000 wax candles perched on wooden supports known as biancherie. The evening is topped off with a fireworks show and is followed the next day with the Palio di San Ranieri, in which crews of rowers from the city's four districts race down the Arno and must climb a 10-metre pole to claim the winner's flag. Calcio Storico final, Florence - June 24th The annual Calcio Storico tournament is one of Florence's most hotly-anticipated summer events. Calcio Storico (or historical football) is an early – and very violent – form of football that originated during the Middle Ages in Italy. It combines elements of modern-day rugby, football and wrestling. Every year, Tuscany's capital sees four teams, each representing a different city district, battle it out to be crowned the champions. The semi-finals take place in early June, while the final match is held on the feast day of the city's patron saint, John the Baptist, on June 24th. A medieval pageant will make its way through the city's streets from Piazza Santa Maria Novella to Piazza della Signoria at around 4pm on the day of the final, with the final set to start at 6pm. The day is usually rounded off with a fireworks display over River Arno. Festival of the Two Worlds, Spoleto - June 27th-July 13th The 68th edition of the Festival dei Due Mondi (or Festival of the Two Worlds) in Spoleto, Umbria, will feature an extensive programme of dance, music, opera and theatre performances. Founded by Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti in 1958, the festival was originally held in conjunction with a similar event in Charleston, South Carolina, with the intention of marrying the 'two worlds' of American and European culture. You can find the full 2025 events calendar here. Palio di Siena, Siena - July 2nd and August 16th The Palio di Siena is one of the most popular horse races in the world, with Siena's 17 contrade districts competing against each other in an intense race held in the city's oval-shaped Piazza del Campo. First held in 1633, the Palio takes place twice a year: on July 2nd and August 16th. The July Palio is called Palio di Provenzano, while the August one is known as Palio dell'Assunta as a homage to the Assumption of Mary, celebrated by the Catholic Church on August 15th. Horses pictured during the final lap of Italy's Palio di Siena on July 2nd, 2022. Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP A number of events are held in the three days preceding the race, including several trial runs and the momentous tratta (draw), where each competing contrada is randomly assigned a horse. On the day of the Palio, a parade made up of nearly 700 participants dressed in historical costumes enchants the public just before the start of the race. Ravello Festival, Ravello, Campania - July 6th-August 25th Among the highlights of the Italian summer is the Ravello Festival, a packed programme of open-air classical music performances held on the terrace of Villa Rufolo, a 13th-century villa overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. This year's festival will see world-famous musicians and conductors perform music by Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, among others. The 2025 edition will close out on August 25th with a performance from the UK's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Perched some 350 metres above sea level, Ravello's elevation provides some welcome relief from the summer heat. If you're in the town this summer, make sure to visit Villa Cimbrone's landscaped gardens, which offer unique views of the Amalfi Coast. Umbria Jazz Festival, Perugia - July 11th-20th One of Europe's leading jazz festivals, Umbria Jazz has both a summer and a winter edition, with this year's summer festival set to run from July 11th to July 20th Herbie Hancock, Mitch Woods, Mark Turner and Isaiah Collier are some of the international acts set to make an appearance in 2025. You can find this year's full programme here. Festa del Redentore, Venice - July 18th-20th Held every year on the third Sunday of July, Venice's Festa del Redentore (Feast of the Redeemer) commemorates the end of a plague that decimated Venice's population, killing as many as 46,000 residents between 1575 and 1576. A number of events take place on the weekdays preceding the feast itself, including the construction of a floating walkway connecting Venice to the nearby Giudecca island. Celebrations traditionally kick off on Saturday afternoon, punctuated by a 40-minute fireworks display over the lagoon's waters at around 11.30pm. Ferragosto, nationwide - August 15th Ferragosto is by far Italy's biggest summer holiday, unofficially marking the peak of the country's vacation season. Though it is celebrated on the same day as the Catholic holiday of the Assumption of Mary, Ferragosto has pagan roots. A view of Monterosso beach, in Italy's Cinque Terre National Park, on August 13th, 2024. Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO / AFP Its origins are in the Feriae Augusti, festivals introduced by Roman emperor Augustus in 18 BC to celebrate the end of the harvest season and give farmers a period of rest after the hard labour of the previous weeks. Despite being one of Italy's most important holidays, Ferragosto is typically a low-key affair, with most Italians celebrating by taking off the week around the feast and heading to the beach or the mountains. That said, some towns around the country generally stage processions where a statue of the Virgin Mary is carried through the streets or, in seaside villages, along the shoreline in a boat. Notte della Taranta, Melpignano, Puglia - August 23rd One of the most hotly-anticipated events of Puglia's summer is the Notte della Taranta. It's a night of high-energy pizzica – a folk dance believed to have originated from the legend that anyone bitten by a tarantula would have to dance in a frenzy for days to flush out the venom. This year's edition will take place in the town of Melpignano, just outside Lecce. I Suoni delle Dolomiti, Trentino - August 27th-October 4th Once you've soaked up all the August sun Italy's coast has to offer, why not see out the end of the summer by heading up north to the Trentino Dolomites to experience live music performances immersed in nature? The staggered music festival The Sounds of the Dolomites takes place in different locations around the Alpine region – from alpine meadows and pastures to mountain huts. This year's programme features a variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, world music, folk and pop. Most performances are free of charge, though reaching the venues often involves hiking or using shuttle services, which are not included and must be paid for separately.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tucci In Italy' On Disney+ And Hulu, Where Stanley Tucci Eats His Way Through Italy Yet Again
Tucci In Italy is more or less a continuation of Stanley Tucci's CNN travel series Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy. He continues to visit different regions of his ancestral home, talking to chefs and other people who contribute to the food culture of a particular region. In the five episodes in this season of the show, Tucci visits Tuscany, Lombardy, Trentino-Alto Adige, Abruzzo and Lazio. Opening Shot: A windy mountain range that yields white marble. Stanley Tucci walks on a ridge and quotes Michelangelo: 'I saw the angel in the marble, and I carved until I set it free.' The Gist: In Tuscany, Tucci starts with Florence, the city many think is Italy's food and culture capital. He tries lampredotto, which is essentially beef intestines, which Florentines often eat on a roll for breakfast(!). Then goes to Dalla Lola, a restaurant specializing in peasant recipes that Florence's working class used to make and eat all the time, including a dish called 'fake tripe.' He then travels to Colonnata, known for its impeccable marble, but also one of the best places to get lardo, which is aged pork fatback. He then goes to Maremma, 'the 'Wild West' of 'Italy's Wild West,' visiting with cattle ranchers called Butteri, who manage herds of free-range cattle that produce low-fat, very tender steaks, which Tucci helps the lead buttero grill. Back in Florence, Tucci eats at an Asian-influenced restaurant that adheres to the city's arcane restaurant rules as far as sourcing of ingredients are concerned, but definitely goes a different way than the usual. Then he goes to Siena, where he observes the mass feasts that happen all over the city during the twice-per-year Palio di Siena. What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As we mentioned, Tucci In Italy is pretty much a continuation of the 2021-22 CNN/BBC series Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy. It's very much in the vein of other food-oriented travel shows, like Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown or Taste The Nation With Padma Take: Despite a couple of years' break and a switch of networks, Tucci In Italy doesn't try to give us anything more than the previous show did, which is Stanley Tucci walking through various places in Italy, where his family was from and where he lived for a time when he was a kid. He is his usual wry and erudite self, enjoying all sorts of food, speaking Italian to the people that are featured in a segment, and muses about the marriage of food and culture in his voice overs. What we thought about all this four years ago, when the original show debuted, really hasn't changed: Tucci isn't quite as personable a narrator as Bourdain or Lakshmi is, and he tends to observe rather than connect with the people he talks to. He definitely can lead towards pretentiousness at times. But he also shows so much passion for his family's homeland, and a fascination with each region's food culture, especially restaurants and dishes that go against the norms of what a tourist might eat when he or she goes to Italy on vacation. So, if there are moments where, for instance, he seems a bit detached when the owner of a local marble mine talks to him about the history of mining in his town, we're figuring he's just thinking about the food he's going to be eating later. Sex and Skin: None, except for sexy shots of Shot: An overview of thousands of people sitting at long tables for the communal dinners during the Palio de Star: In a show like this, the director of photography is the sleeper star, because of all the inviting scenery they shoot. In this episode, the DP is Matt Ball. Most Pilot-y Line: Tucci says 'Wow' a lot when he eats something he loves, though at times we wish he said something like, 'Damn, that's good!' or something equally enthusiastic. Our Call: STREAM IT. Stanley Tucci isn't exactly the most relatable or warm presence as a travel host, but he is thorough, and Tucci In Italy is a good continuation of the journey through the country that he started on CNN in 2021. Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn't kid himself: he's a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, Fast Company and elsewhere.
