One Hundred Years of Festa dell’Uva: Impruneta Tells Its Story in Five Exhibitions

Some festivals belong to the calendar. Others, as the years go by, end up belonging to a place. In Impruneta, September means Festa dell’Uva, the grape harvest festival. And in 2026 that bond reaches a milestone: one hundred years.

A century of floats, costumes, blueprints, sleepless nights of work, rivalries between the four rioni — the town’s neighborhood districts — and, above all, thousands of people who, generation after generation, have built one of the most recognizable folk traditions in the Florence area.

To tell that story, the five Centenary Celebratory Exhibitions opened on Sunday, September 6: a trail scattered through the center of Impruneta that runs across some of the town’s landmark venues, bringing together photographs, objects, drawings, testimonies and material drawn from the history of the festival.

Less a single show than a journey into what happens before, during and around the Festa dell’Uva.

The people behind the festival

The trail begins at the Loggiato del Pellegrino, in Piazza Buondelmonti, and it begins with people.

Twenty “Personaggi” are portrayed here, five for each of the four rioni, chosen among the figures who have shaped — and still shape — the life of the festival. Profiles, blueprints, drawings, models and stories piece together the role of what are described as the festival’s true “souls.”

It is probably the most effective way to start telling a hundred-year story. Because behind the spectacle of the parade and the floats there is work that spans entire generations, and that is hard to grasp by looking only at what happens on the day itself.

The same space also holds the cups in Impruneta terracotta, made by local artists together with the town’s historic kilns, and the original sketch for the 2026 Etichetta d’Autore, the festival’s commissioned label, signed by Roberto Innocenti.

Born in Bagno a Ripoli in 1940, Innocenti is one of the great names in international illustration, winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2008 and the author of work known around the world, from Pinocchio to A Christmas Carol. For the Centenary he has put his signature on an object destined to become part of the memory of this edition.

Faces, waiting and nights of work

A few steps away, still in Piazza Buondelmonti, is the second stop.

At the Sala S. Giuseppe of the Circolo Cattolico, portraits of the protagonists do the storytelling. Not only the parade itself, then, but the faces, the emotions and the waiting that show what September feels like from the point of view of a rionale, a member of one of the four districts.

At the Società Corale di Mutuo Soccorso, on via Vittorio Veneto, the story shifts again.

Here a visual timeline follows the work of the rioni day after day and night after night, returning through images the part of the festival the public normally never sees: the preparation, the effort, the dedication and the enthusiasm it takes to reach the parade.

And it is probably in this hidden dimension that you understand best how an event can make it to a hundred. The Festa dell’Uva is not simply organized every September: it is rebuilt every year by the people who decide to give it their time, their ideas and their work.

A museum of collective memory

The journey continues in the Museo della Festa dell’Uva, again in Piazza Buondelmonti.

Costumes, accessories, objects, paintings and original artifacts from past and present editions make up a kind of material archive of the festival.

These are things made to be used, worn or carried on stage, and once gathered together they also let you trace how taste and creativity have evolved across the four rioni.

Because in a hundred years the way the festival is designed, built and told has inevitably changed. What has not changed is its collective nature: every edition adds something to what came before, and hands something on to the one that follows.

The Festa dell’Uva as seen by children

And it is precisely on the future that the last of the five exhibitions focuses.

At the Sala Giovani of the Casa del Popolo, on via della Croce, you find the projects made by the elementary school classes of the Istituto Primo Levi in Impruneta-Tavarnuzze.

Guided by their teachers and by the rionali, the children were invited to imagine themselves as designers of the parade. They came up with drawings, models, stories and even soundtracks, building their own version of the Festa dell’Uva.

A project that takes on a particular meaning in the Centenary year: while part of the celebrations looks back at the past hundred years, this exhibition tries to imagine who will carry the festival through the next hundred.

A fascinating initiative: the children imagined they were designing the parade of floats, and they made drawings, models, stories and soundtracks. A precious legacy that will allow them, a few years from now, to keep innovating and improving the Festa dell’Uva.

Filippo Venturi, president of the Ente Festa dell’Uva

A generational handover that is probably one of the secrets behind the festival’s longevity.

A tradition survives when someone decides to inherit it — but above all when they feel free to change it.

A hundred years, and a story still to be written

The five exhibitions let you read the Centenary from different angles. There are the protagonists, the faces, the work behind the scenes, the objects accumulated over time, and finally the children.

Past and future end up inside the same trail.

On behalf of the administration I want to thank every volunteer of the Ente Festa dell’Uva from the bottom of my heart, for the wonderful work they have done and for the commitment they are putting into an anniversary that matters so much to our area.

Riccardo Lazzerini, mayor of Impruneta

An anniversary that inevitably concerns Florence and its territory too. Because reaching a hundred years means having crossed generations, social shifts and profound change without losing the ability, every September, to bring a community back around its own streets and its own districts.

A hundred years on, the Festa dell’Uva keeps doing what it probably does best: putting Impruneta on stage through the people who live there.

How to visit the exhibitions

The Centenary Celebratory Exhibitions of the Festa dell’Uva in Impruneta are spread across the Loggiato del Pellegrino, the Sala S. Giuseppe of the Circolo Cattolico, the Società Corale di Mutuo Soccorso, the Museo della Festa dell’Uva and the Sala Giovani of the Casa del Popolo.

The Centenary is held under the patronage of the Tuscany Region, the Metropolitan City of Florence and the Municipality of Impruneta.