The Sagres
20th September, 2009 - Posted by admin - Comments Off
“Sagra” (plural: “sagre”) is the Italian word for the patronage festival
In the past, the Sagre were dedicated to the saints, today they are dedicated to the meal. The regional agricultural specialties are cooked (e.g. regional pasta dishes, olive oil, pesto, wine).
Almost every village has a Sagra of its own in summer. These celebrations are then typically called sagra dell’ uva (the grape festival), sagra della castagna (the edible chestnut festival), sagra del cinghiale (the wild boar festival) etc.
The coming Sagra is always advertised in the respective other villages at the Piazza with posters and takes place at the weekend. One often gets to know that a Sagra is taking place if one is travelling in the hinterland and, suddenly, the whole street is already parked with cars for kilometers on end. In such a case only waiting and patience will help. Or one joins the celebration there and then.
The Sagre are a very good chance for the tourist to really get to know the natives when they are celebrating, cooking, telling stories and dancing. For the villages this is a good opportunity also to earn a little money.
The celebrations are still very traditional and one can expect that one will be given only the best to eat. Otherwise the natives wouldn’t eat it themselves.
The celebrations take place on the Piazza of the respective village. One to two pavilions are set up on which the cooking takes place, another pavilion on which one can buy drinks, preferably wine, (the bottle approx. €6 and regional products) and another pavilion where one pays. One then has to fetch coupons at the money pavilion in front (separately for food and drinks respectively), one then has to hand these over at the next pavilions if one orders something. The Piazza is full of beer benches and a band plays every evening. They play partly typical ligurian/Italian songs, but also known ones where the tourist can also venture on the dance floor which is usually very well populated.
The good thing with Sagre is that they take place under open skies, there is very good, typically ligurian and cheap food, and one can spend a very beautiful, traditional evening away from the stream of tourists. It can only can be recommended for everybody to visit one or two Sagre.