We have been in beautiful Arezzo, in the lesser touristed area of Tuscany for three days. It was the location for the first part of the lovely film "Life is Beautiful" and is a wonderful city. We would have enjoyed just wandering the winding stone streets, admiring the beautiful sandstone buildings and popping in to the churches to see some amazing frescoes.... but our time here has been made more enjoyable because the town is in the middle of a festival to lead up to a major jousting competition next weekend.
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| Piazza Grande as a jousting track |
Piazza Grande has been transformed into a track for the horses and the riders gallop up to a dummy (The Saracen enemy) and clobber it with the lance, earning points depending on how close they get to the bullseye. The competition is between the four quarters of the town and yesterday morning we were entertained for an hour by all the pageantry and procession, in full mediaeval costume, of all the bigwigs, standard bearers straight out of BlackAdder, drummers, trumpeters, jousting team members, all heading to the Duomo Piazza for the draw to decide the order in which the teams would compete. Then everyone, including us but not the horses, processed into the Duomo for a blessing and lots of noise reverberating through the Cathedral.
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| Our local Piazza |
Part of the festival involves street food stalls every night then music and dancing all over the place until very late. It has been party central. We are staying at Bibi Arezzo, having breakfast on the roof each morning and not getting much sleep becasue our neighbourhood Piazza, 20 metres down the road is rocking its socks off each night until late (very late, actually). Do we care? Nup - we're on holiday!
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| Bibi Arezzo is sumptuous |
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