The sagra season in Piedmont, month by month
When the village festivals actually happen, and which months are worth planning a trip around.
Written by the I Love Piedmont editors in Mongardino (AT).
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A sagra is a village festival built around one thing to eat or drink. Piedmont has hundreds of them, and they are not spread evenly across the year. Arrive in the wrong month and you will find shuttered villages and closed kitchens. Arrive in the right one and you will have to choose between four festivals within twenty minutes of each other.
January and February. The quietest weeks in the hills. Restaurants take their annual closure, many small museums shut, and whole villages go to sleep. What is on happens indoors and in the cities: Turin's exhibition season is at full strength, the ski valleys south and west of Cuneo are busy, and carnival builds through February. The single biggest event of the Piedmont winter is the Battle of the Oranges at Ivrea, which takes over the town for the three days before Lent.
March. The turning point. Bagna cauda evenings continue in Asti and Monferrato, and the first spring walks open up. Easter, when it falls in March, brings village processions and the first outdoor markets of the year.
April and May. The hills turn green and the calendar restarts. Wine cellars reopen for visitors, the asparagus and strawberry sagre begin in the Roero, and the castle gardens open. Late May is one of the best times to visit Piedmont: warm enough to eat outside, empty enough to park.
June and July. The first real festival season. Cherry, strawberry and peach sagre in the Roero, open-air concerts in village squares, night markets, and the long light evenings that make the Monferrato worth the trip on their own. The heat arrives in July and events move to the evening.
August. Italy is on holiday and so is Piedmont, which means two things at once: many restaurants close for two or three weeks, and the villages hold their patron saint festivals, the feste patronali, with dancing, a brass band and a communal dinner. Ferragosto, the fifteenth, is the peak.
September. The busiest month of the year. The grape harvest, the Palio di Asti and the Douja d'Or wine competition, the start of the autumn fairs, and a sagra in almost every comune. If you can only come once, come now.
October. The white truffle opens in Alba and dominates every weekend into early December. Chestnut festivals fill the Cuneo valleys and the hill villages. The vineyards turn copper and the light is the best of the year.
November. Truffle markets continue, and the season of the great winter dishes begins: bagna cauda, brasato, bollito misto.
December. Christmas markets from the first weekend, presepi and lights in the hill villages, and the last truffle markets. After Christmas the shutters come down again.
The short version. Late May for space and light. September for the density of events. October for the truffle and the colour. Avoid the first three weeks of January unless you are going skiing.
