The 2008 Festival

Both Weekends
The via Francigena

The numerous activities and events which involved the local people, people from afar and the pilgrims will be brought back to life in a spontaneous fashion. The setting will be during the daily life in a village animated with trade, crafts and domestic activities. Pilgrims, wanderers, and wandering priests needed hospitality: inns and hospices will bring to light a world filled with skills, legends and fears (new and incurable illnesses such as the plague, leprosy and shingles). Charlatans and wanderers will introduce us to the world of magic, superstition and legends. Among these will be pilgrims, knights of fortune and Templars on their way back from the Holy Land boasting possession of rare and precious relics. This will be the object of a reconstruction, presented and organised by the "L'Agresto" Association, to certify and authenticate the relics with the relative liturgical ceremony. An ecclesiastic tribunal will mete out capital punishment or torture to discover the truth, to sort out the impostors and blasphemers of Christ's word. The tribunal will also commission for a gallows to be built on the public square - which will really be constructed by local craftsmen during the celebrations. After the sophisticated tortures the hangman will carry out the death penalty on the condemned man. The festival will stand out for combining the most purely reconstructive aspects - both military (the evolution of military tactics, weapons, defensive systems) and civil (daily life in a town under siege, the food, the jobs etc...) – with the spectacular aspects (acrobats, musicians, jugglers), and this year it aims to be a proper festival on a national level. The key theme which the different show pieces refer to will go beyond creating a town under siege to reach the fantastic esoteric imagery of the Middle Ages, by creating itineraries with a strong suggestive value and by having a fireworks display.

And the Middle Ages will come back to life through the ancient coinage. Ancient coins such as the "Grosso" have been minted at the Lucca mint especially for those who come through the fortress gates. Inside the town the visitors will find bankers with their coffers offering an exchange service.

Youngsters are not forgotten during "Monteriggioni crowned with towers", which is at its 18th edition: during the whole festival there will be learning laboratories for children organised by the Athena Cultural Association (making wooden toys, wall painting, quill and ink writing, weaving) and animation (with the "Viaggiatori del Tempo" – Time Travellers) during which the children will be taken through adventures inside the fortress, a scenario which already belongs to the world of fantasy, with the squares and lanes paved with river stones, the vegetable gardens and olive groves enclosed by the walls and the buildings where a floating ghost might just be seen...