Enjoy The Events
The sea and the past as protagonists
The selection of cultural events is very wide: there is always an opportunity to return or an excuse to spend an alternative evening during your stay.
Do you want to see the profile of Porto Venere drawn in the darkness by thousands of candles? Do not miss the celebrations of the “Madonna Bianca”, who is celebrated on August 17 for over 800 years.
The first Sunday of August it takes place the ”Palio del Golfo”, the most important of the summer rowing duel, in which the 13 “borgate” (sea villages) of the stretch of the coast between Porto Venere and Tellaro battle for the supremacy in the Gulf. The sea is also the protagonist of the biennial Maritime Festival, the Exodus prize and Mytiliade, an event in Lerici dedicated to mussels and their cultivation. The same bond with the sea is repeated on September 13 , the day of St. Venerio, which is the only annual occasion to visit the pristine island of Tino.
We cannot forget the long-lived jazz festival in Italy, which is held continuously in La Spezia since 1969, the “Festival della Mente” in Sarzana, a September event dedicated to creativity who in a few years has achieved great importance, and the appointments of the theatrical festival Mondomare.
Every first Sunday of the month you can lose yourself among the stands of “Cercantico”, or you can wait for the month of August and spend it in the streets during the “Soffitta” in Sarzana, looking for some news coming from the past.
And making a great leap backward you can attend the commemorations of Dante’s Peace in Castelnuovo Magra, the Napoleon festival in Sarzana , the “Palio dei Rioni” in Vezzano, together with the unmissable festival of wine and grapes, the “Omo ar bozo”, the peculiar carnival of Ameglia and the cattle fair of St. Stephen protomartyr with the evocation of the ancient works on the Via Francigena, near Santo Stefano Magra.
And then the literary prize Lerici Pea, since 1954, the film festival Lericinema, and the “Acoustic guitar international meeting”.