EVENT NAME: Grape Festival

EVENT PLACE: Impruneta

EVENT DATE: 29 September 2024

EVENT PRICE: tickets

EVENT DESCRIPTION:

The research conducted to date and the archive documents tell us that the Impruneta Grape Festival was officially born in 1928 when the town was still under the jurisdiction of the Municipality of Galluzzo. Nothing is known about that first Festival but everything that has been preserved from that period determines that starting date. Since then, every first Sunday of autumn in the splendid setting of Piazza Buondelmonti, the fruit of the vine is celebrated with a parade of allegorical floats. It is natural to ask ourselves: why does this festival, despite its age, still live? Surely because it is not a historical re-enactment of the good old times, on the contrary it is a constantly evolving event.

Sleepless night after sleepless night, the '90s projected the Festival into modernity: the innovation of the '80s was consolidated, the pace of the parades became pressing, the scenic impact of the float-parade combination increased the public's fascination. In the middle of the decade, the trend of the transformer wagon took hold, that is, a construction that initially appears one way and ends up becoming something else. Innovations often reward those who propose them and over the years they end up becoming everyone's heritage. Today, floats that transform, scenes that move or rotate, colors that change, objects that are put together with the help of figures or complicated gears and mechanisms are the order of the day.

In the 2000s, scenographic and choreographic elements, including costumes, have generally taken precedence over story and construction. To develop these theatrical mechanisms, the help of professionals external to the Impruneto environment has not always proved successful, on the contrary, professionalism has arisen within the Rioni which is also used outside our country. 50 years ago we were impressed by how a caravel, a guitar, a gramophone, an ancient amphora were made, enlarged and perhaps covered in grapes. Today alchemy is represented by that moment in which the observer is moved by the widespread beauty created by music, colors, words, movements, constructions.

R. Lazzerini, F. Venturi, L'UVA IN FESTA – THE “90 YEARS” OF THE IMPRUNETA GRAPE FESTIVAL, Florence, Florence Art Edizoni, 2016.

For information info@festadelluvaimpruneta.it (grandstand tickets can be booked for residents outside the Province of Florence, nominated and assigned in special spaces decided by the organization).