Ancient Festival of the Pan

Original name: Antica Festa del Tegame

Place: Monte Sopra Rondine hamlet, in Municipality of Arezzo, in Arezzo province.

First year of the festival: 1975

Period: last days of August - first half of September

2024 scheduled on: from August, Thursday 29 to September, Sunday 1 and from September, Thursday 5 to September, Sunday 8

Opening time: every evening, from 7 p.m.

Local specialties:

• First courses: Ribollita, bread soup; zuppa di funghi, mushrooms' soup; maccheroni al sugo di carne, maccheroni pasta with veal meat sauce; maccheroni al sugo di nana, maccheroni pasta with duck sauce
• Second courses: Fegatelli, pork livers; trippa, veal tripe; grifi all'aretina, calf muscle; cinghiale in umido, wild boar stew; nana in porchetta, roasted duck

It's a great sagra and you won't be disappointed. Such food festivals are great, because the true local tradition is strictly respected; this giving you the possibility to discover wonderful recipes, which sometimes are difficult to find today.

Among these recipes, the classical ribollita, a Tuscan bread soup, and the mushrooms soup; the maccheroni pasta with, by choice, veal meat sauce or duck sauce; the fegatelli, pork livers, a great traditional peasants' dish, nowadays way less prepared; wild boar or duck, perfectly cooked.

In this magnificent menu, probably the place of honor is reserved to the grifi all'aretina; don't miss it! Made with the poorest parts of the veal, precisely the calf muscle, it's a sort of stew; once greatly popular in Arezzo area, grifi all'aretina can still be found inside local family cuisine, in some restaurants and here, in Monte Sopra Rondine, extraordinarily well done!

A word about this sagra name; this food festival was held to celebrate the Patron Saint of the village and in this occasions, peasants could eat many meat dishes - a full "pot" of meat dishes! - thing that normally during the year, it was to expensive to afford.