August

All Italy is on holiday in August. The third biggest holiday of the year is Ferragosto on the 15th. Villages, practically deserted in winter, suddenly fill up with emigrant Italians back for a nostalgic month in the houses in which they were born. Children pedal tricycles in the piazza while their parents, seated at tables in front of the bar, catch up on the year's gossip. Even hardworking artisan food producers relax for a couple of days with their families. It's a good time to join the locals at a festival, the sheep and goats still have to be milked and cheese made, and wild berries are waiting to be picked on refreshingly cool alpine slopes.

Sample activities

Pick wild blueberries on the crest of the Apennine mountains and make jam
Visit a cheesemaker in a mountain gorge, help her make goat cheese and ricotta with milk from her own herd, walk up the gorge
Eight-row corn festival leads you through the town from one inventive course to the next in private courtyards of old farmhouses and a water mill
Spend a day on an organic farm making focaccia and picking heritage fruit and vegetables
Visit a working 18th-century water mill
Learn to make gelato at one of the best gelaterias in Italy
Visit trout farm where the fish have room to swim, lunch of trout for every course (well, not dessert) and the adjacent hermitage church carved out of rock
Almost every night enjoy good food, wine and music at festivals with crazy themes from mediaeval bandits to bread and biroldo (a Garfagnana speciality)
Guided tour of the stalagmites and stalactites of the Grotta del Vento, cool even in August
Visit the mediaeval walled town of Barga
Guided tour of one of the grand villas and its gardens near Lucca
Walk in the summer woods
Meals in family restaurants off the beaten track

Ask us for our full menu of activities since we're always finding new interesting producers.