The best small towns with a food festival in Toscana
A Tuscan food festival is not a fair with a stage. It is a trestle table in a piazza of travertine or dark volcanic stone, a paper menu with a single ingredient running through every course, and a queue of local families paying at a hut before they sit down. The calendar follows the harvest, so chestnut flour and new olive oil bring people out in late autumn, pecorino and wild herbs in spring, and wild boar whenever the hunt allows it. Sheep's cheese from the Val d'Orcia, pici rolled by hand, chestnut necci cooked between iron plates, sheep's-milk ricotta eaten warm: the menus are narrow on purpose. Wine comes in plastic cups from producers whose vineyards are visible from the table.
Most people eat their way through Tuscany in Florence, where the queue outside the Mercato Centrale and the trattorie around Santa Croce runs steadily from spring to the end of October, and the region's food reputation is bound tightly to Chianti and to Siena in Palio season. The city earns its crowds, and the bistecca alla fiorentina is worth ordering. But a busy urban market is a shop, not a village supper, and a restaurant table in high season rarely tells you what a particular hillside actually grows.
The same hills carry on south and east, into the Val d'Orcia, the Val di Chiana, the flank of Monte Amiata and the coastal ridges above the Cecina valley, and the sagre are what those hills do with their own produce. Fewer people go, partly because the dates are posted on a parish noticeboard rather than sold as a ticket. The towns here are small, walkable in an hour, and most of them build one weekend a year around a single thing they grow or raise. This list gathers those towns, with what they cook and roughly when they cook it.
Of the 84 communes we have mapped in Toscana, 34 qualify as towns with a food festival: each holds a recurring food festival built around one local ingredient. This list is the small ones, 10 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Capraia Isola, has 370 residents.
Two more lists worth reading alongside this one: The 10 prettiest villages with a food festival in Toscana and The best small towns with a medieval festival in Toscana.
Capraia Isola
Why visit Capraia Isola
The island is the northernmost of seven, sitting apart from Elba and Giglio to its south. It carries one village and one harbor, and beyond a few service vehicles there are no cars.
The volcanic plateau rises above the settlement, holding the freshwater lake at its center, the only one of its kind among the archipelago's islands, while the coast runs down to the red cliffs on the western side and out to the abandoned signal station at the southern tip. The fort above the harbor stood guard for two centuries before the island's later history turned inward: the penal colony took two thirds of the land from 1873, pushed out most residents, and left its buildings to scrub after 1986, the same year its fences and cells came down.
Ten years later the park absorbed the island whole, water and land together. The comune now counts 370 residents, the least-populated Italian municipality with an outlet to the sea.
What was built to confine the island then opened it: a fortress, a prison, and now a park have each in turn defined how much of Capraia belongs to the few who live there and how much is held in trust for everyone else.
What to see in Capraia Isola
- Forte San Giorgio. Genoese fort above the harbor, built in 1540 on the foundation of an earlier tower destroyed by Turgut Reis. It held the line against pirates for two centuries.
- Cala Rossa. Red volcanic cove on the western side of the island, where the cliffs hold the color of oxidized basalt.
- Stagnone. Small natural lake at 320 meters on the volcanic plateau above the village, the only freshwater basin in the Tuscan Archipelago.
How to get to Capraia Isola
Our tip
May through September is the only practical season on Capraia. The ferry from Livorno runs three to four times a week in summer, less in winter, and the crossing takes two and a half hours through open sea. The Mediterranean warms enough to swim from mid-May; July and August fill the few rooms on the island and book out the small restaurants in the village. Sagra del Totano Capraia falls in October.
Casale Marittimo
Why visit Casale Marittimo
Casale Marittimo rises on a hill at 214 meters above the Val di Cecina, fifty kilometers southeast of Pisa, the Tyrrhenian coast visible from the upper streets. The settlement here was an outpost of Etruscan Volterra in the seventh century BC; the necropolis of Casa Nocera turned up two stone statues of warrior princes, now in the Archaeological Museum of Florence, among the oldest figurative sculptures in European art.
The medieval centro is recorded as a castle of the Counts of Gherardesca by 1004, the streets arranged in concentric rings inside the old walls, stone houses pressed against the slope. Casale Marittimo carries both the Borghi più belli d'Italia and Bandiera Arancione marks, unusual for a commune of just over a thousand inhabitants.
The Chiesa di Sant'Andrea sits on the foundations of an older parish church; Palazzo Rocca and the eighteenth-century Santa Maria delle Grazie close the small loop of the centro storico.
What to see in Casale Marittimo
- Centro storico. Concentric ring of stone streets inside the medieval walls, with houses pressed against the slope and Palazzo Rocca at the top.
- Chiesa di Sant'Andrea. Parish church rebuilt on the ruins of an older pieve, the principal religious building of the borgo.
- Santa Maria delle Grazie. Eighteenth-century church on the lower edge of the centro storico, simple Tuscan late-Baroque façade.
How to get to Casale Marittimo
Livorno is roughly 50 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings the warm coastal hills into their best season, evenings still cool on the ridge. September and October are dry and clear, the harvest in the surrounding vineyards followed by the olive pick. July and August are hot in the Val di Cecina, but the sea breeze reaches the upper streets and tempers the worst of it. Sagra della Tagliata Mare e Terra falls in July.
Isola del Giglio
Why visit Isola del Giglio
Isola del Giglio is the second-largest island in the Tuscan Archipelago, almost entirely granite, the highest point at Poggio della Pagana 496 meters above the sea. The commune has three inhabited frazioni: Giglio Porto on the eastern coast, where the ferries from Porto Santo Stefano dock; Giglio Castello on the central ridge at around 405 meters, the walled medieval village and administrative center; and Giglio Campese on the western bay, a 1960s seaside resort built on an old pyrite mine closed in 1964.
Charlemagne gave the island to the abbey of Tre Fontane in 805. It was Pisan from 1264, ceded to Antonio Piccolomini in the fifteenth century, then passed to the Medici in 1558.
Saracen raids continued until 1799. The wreck of the Costa Concordia on the night of 13 January 2012 killed thirty-two people and held the world's attention until the ship was righted, refloated and towed to Genoa in July 2014.
What to see in Isola del Giglio
- Giglio Castello. Walled medieval village on the ridge at around 405 meters, with intact mura and the Rocca Aldobrandesca, the administrative center of the island.
- Giglio Porto. Main harbor of the island on the east coast, with the colored houses around the small ferry dock and the lighthouse of Capel Rosso to the south.
- Giglio Campese. Largest bay and sandy beach of the island on the west coast, with the medieval Torre del Campese and the disused pyrite mine on the headland.
How to get to Isola del Giglio
Our tip
May through September is the only practical season for Giglio. The ferries from Porto Santo Stefano run on a full schedule, the beaches at Campese and the smaller coves work, and the temperature in Castello on the ridge stays manageable through August. July and August are crowded with mainland day-trippers; the island roughly doubles in population. Festa dell'Uva e delle Cantine falls in September.
Pienza
Why visit Pienza
Pienza sits at 491 meters on a long ridge in the Val d'Orcia, an hour and a half south of Siena. The village was called Corsignano until 1462.
Enea Silvio Piccolomini was born here in 1405 and became Pope Pius II in 1458; the following year he ordered the Florentine architect Bernardo Rossellino to rebuild his birthplace as a Renaissance ideal city. The work took three years.
The square at the center, the cathedral on the cliff side, the palace built for the pope's family, the cardinal's palace facing it, and the town hall opposite the cathedral were all designed and built as a single composition rather than assembled piece by piece over time. Pius consecrated the cathedral on 29 August 1462, two years before his death, and the whole arrangement has survived almost unchanged since.
What stands in Pienza today is less a collection of monuments than the physical record of one commission carried out in one stretch of years.
The re-enactment here is Festa rinascimentale e corsa di Pio a Pienza, usually held in September.
What to see in Pienza
- Piazza Pio II. Trapezoidal Renaissance square laid out by Bernardo Rossellino, with the Duomo, Palazzo Piccolomini, Palazzo Borgia and Palazzo Comunale facing each other.
- Duomo di Pienza. Latin-cross cathedral with three apsidal chapels, built on the cliff edge, its Renaissance façade also by Rossellino.
- Palazzo Piccolomini. Renaissance palace for the pope's family, begun 1459, with an internal courtyard and a hanging garden overlooking the Val d'Orcia.
How to get to Pienza
Perugia is roughly 98 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Pienza
“Now, the postcard itself, the towns, and here I have less to say than you would expect, because Pienza and Montepulciano have become, and I mean this precisely, the canteens of a theme park. They are where you go to park, walk a pretty street, use the toilet, refill the water, eat a plate of something, and buy a thing to take home. They are the food court between the rides.”
Read our piece on Pienza →Val d'Orcia | The Postcard Is Constructed
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months when the Val d'Orcia sits at its best, green or gold depending on the wheat cycle, and the Piazza Pio II is open for photographs without the day-tripper buses. July and August push past thirty-three degrees and the Corso Rossellino fills with tour groups between ten and four. The Fiera del Cacio, the cheese festival, takes the first Sunday in September, when the streets fill with stalls of pecorino producers from the Pienza ridge. Festa del Cacio di Pienza falls in September.
San Quirico d'Orcia
Why visit San Quirico d'Orcia
San Quirico d'Orcia sits at 409 meters on a low rise in the Val d'Orcia, the rolling clay-and-tufa landscape inscribed by UNESCO in 2004 as a cultural landscape shaped by fourteenth and fifteenth-century Sienese governance. The town was a stage on Sigeric the Serious's tenth-century Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome and has remained a working stop on the route ever since.
The Collegiata dei Santi Quirico e Giulitta was built at the end of the twelfth century over an eighth-century baptistery; the lateral portal added in 1288 is attributed to Giovanni Pisano, then working on the Siena cathedral. The Horti Leonini, the geometric boxwood garden laid out by Diomede Leoni around 1580 inside the town walls, hosts the Forme nel Verde sculpture exhibition every summer since 1971.
Bagno Vignoni, the frazione five kilometers down the road, has a thermal pool at the center of its piazza, used since Etruscan times. Few comuni this small carry UNESCO, thermal and Francigena signals at once.
The re-enactment here is Festa del Barbarossa a San Quirico d'Orcia, usually held in June.
What to see in San Quirico d'Orcia
- Collegiata dei Santi Quirico e Giulitta. Romanesque parish church built late twelfth century over an eighth-century baptistery, with the 1288 lateral portal attributed to Giovanni Pisano.
- Horti Leonini. Italianate boxwood garden laid out by Diomede Leoni around 1580 inside the town walls, hosting the Forme nel Verde sculpture exhibition since 1971.
- Bagno Vignoni. Frazione five kilometers south, with a sixteenth-century thermal pool at the center of its piazza, fed by springs used since Etruscan times.
How to get to San Quirico d'Orcia
Perugia is roughly 96 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the gold months in the Val d'Orcia: green wheat in spring, ochre stubble by autumn, low light that defines the cypress ridges. The Festa del Barbarossa runs the third Sunday of June with archery, jousts and crossbow contests between the town quarters. July and August are hot and busy; the centro storico fills with day-trippers from Pienza and Montalcino. Festa del Barbarossa a San Quirico d'Orcia falls in June.
Capalbio
Why visit Capalbio
Capalbio stands twelve kilometers from the Tyrrhenian coast, the last hill town before the border with Lazio. Charlemagne gave the land to the Abbey of Tre Fontane in 805; the Aldobrandeschi held it through the medieval period, the Orsini built the castle, and Cosimo I de' Medici took it in 1555.
It became an independent commune in 1960. The medieval walls and the fortress define the centro storico at the top of the hill; the surrounding territory drops from the wooded uplands of Monte Calmata down to the coastal reserve at Lago di Burano.
The sculpture park sits four kilometers south of the walls, apart from the old town rather than within it. A borgo that governed itself late, held by abbey, feudal lords and Medici in turn before its own commune, and a territory that runs in one line from hilltop stone to coastal wetland.
What to see in Capalbio
- Rocca Aldobrandesca. Medieval fortress at the top of the borgo, later expanded by the Orsini, with a square tower and battlements that overlook the Maremma.
- Mura medievali. Two concentric circles of walls enclosing the centro storico, with a walkable parapet that opens onto views toward the Argentario.
- Giardino dei Tarocchi. Sculpture park four kilometers south of the borgo, its ceramic and mirrored figures set among holm oaks.
How to get to Capalbio
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Roma is roughly 108 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Capalbio
“Everyone driving from Florence down to Rome crosses the Maremma without noticing, because there is nothing on that stretch to make them slow down. The hills give out. The cypresses stop. What opens up instead is flat open country, wheat and grass running off to a few low rises, the least Tuscan-looking part of Tuscany, a landscape you would call dull if you were being honest and which most guidebooks solve by leaving out.”
Read our piece on Capalbio →Maremma | The Last Cowboys of Tuscany
Our tip
May through September is the season the borgo and its territory work together: the centro storico stays cool at 217 meters while the Tyrrhenian coast at Chiarone-Capalbio fills with swimmers. The Giardino dei Tarocchi runs April through October. July and August are hot inland; afternoon hours in the borgo thin out and the coast takes over. Sagra del Cinghiale falls in September.
San Casciano dei Bagni
Why visit San Casciano dei Bagni
San Casciano dei Bagni sits at 582 meters at the southern edge of the province of Siena, above 42 hot springs that average 42 degrees Celsius. The baths were used continuously from Etruscan through Roman times and again from the Renaissance, when visitors came from across Europe.
In 2022, an excavation that began in 2019 at the ancient sanctuary turned up 24 bronze votive statues protected by mud, with around 6,000 coins in gold, silver and bronze. The find was the largest of its kind in fifty years; most surviving Etruscan votive material is terracotta.
The 1,500 residents live on a basalt outcrop above the Roman thermal complex, in a centro storico of stone houses and three small churches. The borgo joined the Borghi più belli network in 2014 and remains one of the smallest communes in Toscana to carry both that label and Bandiera Arancione.
The re-enactment here is Palio di San Cassiano di San Casciano dei Bagni, usually held in August.
What to see in San Casciano dei Bagni
- Santuario Ritrovato. Etruscan-Roman thermal sanctuary excavated since 2019, where 24 bronze votives and around 6,000 coins were recovered in 2022.
- Bagno Grande. The principal natural pool of the 42 hot springs, used from the second century BC through the Renaissance and reopened to the public.
- Collegiata di San Leonardo. Romanesque parish church in the centro storico, restored in the seventeenth century, with a baptismal font carved from local travertine.
How to get to San Casciano dei Bagni
Perugia is roughly 68 minutes away by road.
Our tip
The thermal pools make the calendar different here. Winter is the season many visitors prefer, when the 42-degree water steams against cold air and snow occasionally dusts the basalt outcrop. April through June and September into October are the most balanced months: warm hill light, the dry-stone walls of the borgo at their best, the sanctuary excavations open to guided tours. Sagra del Ciaffagnone di San Casciano dei Bagni falls in June.
Montescudaio
Why visit Montescudaio
Montescudaio sits fifteen kilometers inland from the Tyrrhenian coast, on a hill above the valley the Cecina river cuts toward the sea. Fewer than 2,200 people live in the commune, and most of them are outside the centro storico, which is left as a tight knot of stone houses ringed by its old walls: a single church, the clock tower, and the terrace where the vines drop downhill toward the Val di Cecina and the water beyond.
The town carries four institutional signals at once, an unusual density for its size: a registered wine appellation, a bread-network membership rare in this part of Tuscany, a name that predates the medieval walls, and the walls themselves built around an eleventh-century abbey. Wine and bread are both grown and baked around the same hilltop that once needed fortifying.
The fortress, the loaf, and the vineyard are not three separate stories here but three uses of the same ground, worked over centuries after the shields it was named for stopped being necessary.
What to see in Montescudaio
- Centro storico. Walled medieval village, a tight ring of stone houses on the hilltop, built around the abbey that gave the settlement its first walls and structure.
- Torre Civica. Clock tower at the entrance to the borgo, the tallest visible structure and former civic landmark of the fortified village.
- Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta. Eleventh-century parish church on the site of the medieval abbey, the anchor around which the walled village took shape.
How to get to Montescudaio
Livorno is roughly 44 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through September is the season on the Cecina hills: dry days, vine work, harvest from late August through September. The coast lies fifteen kilometers west and the sea breeze keeps evening temperatures lower than the inland Maremma. July and August bring crowds to the beaches at Cecina and Marina di Bibbona, but the borgo on the hill stays quieter. Festa del Vino di Montescudaio falls in October.
Cetona
Why visit Cetona
The town sits on the western flank of a ridge at the meeting point of Toscana, Umbria and Lazio, where the mountain divides the Val d'Orcia from the Val di Chiana. The medieval comune passed between Siena, Orvieto and Perugia before falling to Siena in the late fourteenth century, and it was Cosimo I who later sold it whole to a marchese.
The fortress at the top of the grid and the square laid out below it are two halves of the same Renaissance move: a private residence replacing a garrison at the summit, a flat civic stage opened up at the base. Above the town, in the woods, the hermitage and the caves belong to a much older layer, human use of the mountain reaching back to the Mesolithic, long before any comune or marchese laid claim to it.
What the town adds up to is a settlement built in tiers: a prehistoric mountain, a contested medieval center, and a Renaissance overlay that reorganized the base of the hill without touching what stood above it.
The re-enactment here is Corsa delle brocche a Cetona, usually held in July.
What to see in Cetona
- Piazza Garibaldi. Elliptical square at the foot of the medieval grid, flat and open where the streets above it climb steeply. The civic stage of the borgo, still the first thing that orients a visitor.
- Rocca di Cetona. Fortress at the top of the centro storico, its walls and keep still standing though the interior became a private residence rather than a garrison.
- Convento di San Francesco. Franciscan convent below the borgo, founded in 1212, with a single-nave church and a small cloister still in religious use.
How to get to Cetona
Perugia is roughly 78 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months Cetona keeps its calmest pace, the wooded slopes of Monte Cetona green or rust depending on the half. July and August are hot in the centro storico but the mountain trails above 800 meters stay cool. The Mostra del Tartufo, dedicated to the local white truffles, runs the second weekend of November in Piazza Garibaldi. Sagra del Bico di Cetona falls in June.
Lucignano
Why visit Lucignano
Lucignano sits at 400 meters on a hill in the Valdichiana, halfway between Siena and Arezzo, built on a tight elliptical plan of four concentric rings of streets. Its position made it one of the most contested settlements of medieval Toscana: Siena, Arezzo, Florence and Perugia all fought over it between 1200 and 1500.
The current walls and three gates date to a Sienese reconstruction of 1371. In the Museo Civico inside the Palazzo Comunale stands the Albero d'Oro, a 260-centimeter Gothic gold-and-coral reliquary in the shape of a tree, begun by Ugolino di Vieri in 1350 and finished by Gabriello d'Antonio in 1471.
Local tradition turned it into the Albero dell'Amore, a marriage charm. The Collegiata di San Michele Arcangelo dominates the highest ring of the borgo, and the elliptical plan is best read from the air, which is why drone footage of Lucignano keeps appearing in articles about medieval Tuscan urbanism.
The re-enactment here is Memorie dal passato a Lucignano, usually held in September.
What to see in Lucignano
- Albero d'Oro. 260-cm Gothic reliquary in the shape of a tree, gold, coral and enamel, begun by Ugolino di Vieri in 1350 and completed by Gabriello d'Antonio in 1471.
- Centro storico ellittico. Four concentric rings of streets inside elliptical walls, the most complete example of medieval Tuscan elliptical town planning.
- Collegiata di San Michele Arcangelo. Eighteenth-century church on the highest ring of the borgo, with a Vasari façade adjustment and a baroque organ inside the medieval shell.
How to get to Lucignano
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Perugia is roughly 65 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the months Lucignano keeps its balance, the Valdichiana green or gold depending on the half and the centro storico cool inside its elliptical walls. The Maggiolata, a flower festival between the four quarters of the borgo, runs across the last two Sundays of May. July and August push the valley past thirty and the centro storico thins after lunch. Sagra della Filiera del Tartufo Marzuolo falls in March.
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