The Festival of San Lorenzo

Where we are staying in Florence is on the actual edge of the Piazza San Lorenzo that has the Florentine Leather Markets surrounding it and the Basilica di San Lorenzo. For those of you that do not know, San Lorenzo is the Patron Saint of Cooks, and Lesley is a Cooking Fanatic, she just loves cooking. To do this "Gap year" she has had to temporarily close the doors to her cooking classes business, Simply d'Vine Cooking. So it seemed quite appropriate that the only festival we were likely to see while in Italy was this one.

Basilica di San Lorenzo his nig picture only appeared the other day

We had noticed a few posters around advertising the festival over the last couple of days, so I had got onto the Internet and checked out the events timetable and found that it all kicked of with a procession starting just outside of another piazza, Piazza della Signoria, a few hundred metres away at 10am today.

We made our way to Piazza della Signoria, which is always very heavily crowded with tourists, but today because it was reasonably early this was not the case. We sat down on the west side of the Piazza where we knew the procession would enter as it was starting just around the corner from there. Again, we were surprised no-one else was anywhere near us, they were all over the other side where all of the attractions are.

Around the corner they came

Very soon the procession appeared and came into the Piazza, we were in the best position by far, everyone else seemed to be surprised to see them and stayed where they where as the procession moved towards them in the square.

Colour everywhere

It was so colourful with all of the different uniforms and outfits, and sounded great as all of the drummers and trumpeters started playing.

Drummers were drumming

Trumpeters were trumpeting

Flag bearers were throwing

Towards the back of the procession where all of the flag bearers who started waving and throwing their flags about, what a great sight.

A salute to San Lorenzo in Piazza della Signoria

It was everything you have ever seen on travel shows and brochures.

The great thing about the Internet is the detail you can find about events...we knew the path the procession was going to take to Basilica di San Lorenzo. So we went off some side streets and sat waiting for the procession to appear again

Moving closer to Basilica di San Lorenzo

We kept taking in the whole atmosphere of the parade, then moved on to the next viewing point, each time getting a clear viewing spot as they appeared.

Finally, we moved onto Piazza San Lorenzo where a crowd had started to gather for the grand finale.

The flag throwers finale

The parade and crowd gathered for the final salute to San Lorenzo

Later on in the evening we sat and listened to some classical music that had been put on for free in front of the Basilica in the Piazza, very nice.

Free Classical Music Concert

But we did not stay around for the free Pasta and Watermelon (yes, I agree, a rather unusual combination), but they did come in separate bowls. We had read about the organised chaos and disasters of previous years when it came time to getting the food, with mass queue jumping, hours of waiting to get a small bowl of pasta, the watermelon rind fights....no we just took some photos and went up to our room.

The queues starting to gather for the free food

Thank you San Lorenzo, we had a great day!

 

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