Mercantia, international fourth theater festival.

Every year, on a weekend in July, the festival takes place in the old part of the town, which was the birthplace, in 1313, of the storyteller Giovanni Boccaccio. Stages, scenographic frames, pictorial exhibitions and artisan benches are set up in the streets with the intention of weaving different artistic talents, with the magical atmospheric of the village. The walls are accessed from the Porte del Sole, Alberti or del Rivellino from which the characteristic streets in smooth stone paving or red bricks branch off, such as the walls of the houses, arranged in a herringbone pattern, to drain rainwater . Overlooking P. Alberti is Palazzo Stiozzi, a complex of turreted buildings annexed to the ancient fortress. Going up we meet Casa Boccaccio, where documents from the study center and many historical versions of the Decameron are exhibited in the elegant rooms. The Romanesque-style Church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo forms the corner of the Piazzetta, where the remains of the storyteller and Beata Giulia della Rena are housed. Facing the building, the museum of sacred art collects a collection of artistic works. A well with a flowery arch communicates with the semicircular apse of the Church and the road continues towards the Church of Santi Tommaso e Prospero. Ancient building of the thirteenth, due to a landslide, it experienced the collapse of the apse and the cloister, but inside, you can admire the Tabernacle by Benozzo Gozzoli. We are in the upper part of the upper town, where the Palazzo Pretorio dominates, whose terrace offers the stage to dancers and tightrope walkers. It was the keep of the Castello dei Conti Alberti and subsequent seat of the Florentine Vicars, of which the numerous stone or ceramic coats of arms tell us. In the rooms there are paintings by Pier Francesco Fiorentino, such as the Madonna and Child (1489), The Crucifixion (1478) and the Pietà. The corner with the Japanese tea room embellishes the internal courtyard and the patrol on the bastion of the building, opening the view overlooking the valley and the ancient Via Francigena.