Festival of Festivals

The second weekend in September, from Saturday to 19 o'clock to Sunday night, in Asti, over 40 Pro-loco of the province offer their culinary specialties, Asti DOC wines in a great outdoor restaurant, where thousands and thousands of people can be accommodated in an old country village.

Dusting off the cookbooks written and oral of generations of peasant housewifes, a great menu with all the assets of the gastronomy poor and middle-class of the’Astigiano and the Monferrato, cooked with carefully chosen ingredients and local style.

At Festival of Festivals there is the opportunity to choose from more than eighty different dishes, sweets, salted, dry and wet, all full of flavor and some unusual now, like for example the Finanziera meat dish of chicken, the barbera rice , the wild boar stew with polenta, agnolotti with rabbit meat, fries bleak, la farinata (in the Asti dialect belecauda) or boiled meat with “green sauce (bagnetto verde)”.

All this after the evocative parade that winds its way through the city streets, animated by more than three thousand people in authentic period costumes, tractors, antique tools, representing the values and traditions of this magnificent land. 250 wagons pulled by old tractors and a surprising little zoo home with oxen, horses, mules, asinelli, goats, geese, ducks, Truffle dogs, chickens and turkeys.
The parade is the event for those who want to enjoy the taste of the simple things of the past every year, the character of the countryside that remain alive in the history of those practices that have their roots in these hills

Saturday, at 19

Preview of the Festival delle Sagre: in Piazza Campo del Palio the Pro-Loco serve their gastronomic specialties

Sunday, at 9,15

From Piazza Marconi, start of parade. Three thousand characters in wagons pulled by tractors, oxen and horses, represent the most significant scenes of life and ancient civilization.

The parade winds its way through the streets of the city centre: Via Cavour, Piazza Statuto, Piazza San Secondo, Via Gobetti, Corso Alfieri, Piazza Alfieri, Corso Alfieri, I° Maggio Square, Via Calosso, Road to victory, Via F.lli Rosselli, Course G. Ferraris, Corso Einaudi.

At 11.30 – 22

In the “gourmet village” Piazza Campo del Palio begins the distribution to the public of the country cuisine menu created by over 40 Pro-Loco. The festival lasts until late at night when they run out of stocks.

The parade offers the most significant scenes of life and culture in the country. "A year in a day" may be the synthesis of this parade, a true living museum. The parade is punctuated by the succession of the seasons. For about two hours the procession winds its way through the streets of downtown uninterrupted between two wings of the crowd, prompting participation, curiosity, admiration, Cheers and, very often, commotion. The pageant has nothing to do with a simple parade commonly understood. There is in it no superficial fiction: everything is strictly authentic: from the tools, the machines, to the people.