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Since the Middle Ages, Siena has staged a bareback horse race around the Campo. Preparations and festivities last for a week. On the day of the race you can stand in the Campo’s centre for free or buy a seat ticket (months in advance) from any business ringing the piazza. Enjoy the pageantry and sbandieratori (flag tossers), before glimpsing the furious, 90-second race.

When the Virgin was assumed, body and soul, to Heaven, Doubting Thomas was sceptical, so she handed him down her girdle as proof of her ascent. A Prato Crusader brought the belt back as the dowry of a Thomas descendant, it was encased in a glass and gold reliquary, and locked in the Duomo. Five times a year the bishop shows it to crowds thronging the piazza and church, and lets a line-up of the faithful kiss the case. A procession is then led by musicians dressed in Renaissance-style costumes.

A horseback jousting contest played in medieval costume on the sloping Piazza Grande. It’s the only joust in Tuscany where the target can hit back – the stylized “Saracen” is allowed to turn and knock the rider as he gallops past.

Football without the rules, between Florence’s four traditional neighbourhoods. This violent game in Renaissance costume is usually played on the dusty Piazza Santa Croce, with matches in some years taking place in Piazza Signoria or the Boboli Gardens.

Viareggio’s carnival may lack the costumed balls of Venice, but their parade of elaborate floats is almost as famous.

White oxen pull a firework-laden cart from the baptistry’s Gates of Paradise to the Duomo. During Easter mass, a mechanical dove sails on a wire down the nave and through the door to ignite the cart in an explosion of noise and colour.

May brings concerts, plays and recitals to Florence’s theatres, churches and public spaces. Best of all are those held under the stars in the ancient Roman theatre high above the city in Fiesole. Check the festival website for schedules.

Montalcino celebrates hunting season by throwing a food festival in the medieval fortezza , roasting thousands of thrushes on spits over open fires, boiling up vats of polenta and washing it all down with Brunello wine.

After a week of medieval pageantry, festivities and feasting, costumed two-man teams from Montepulciano’s eight neighbourhoods prove their racing prowess by rolling hefty barrels up this hill town’s meandering, often steep main street to the piazza at the top.

Pisan residents from either side of the Arno have always been rivals, and they fight it out by dressing in Renaissance costume and staging an inverse tug-of-war on the city’s oldest bridge, competing to push a giant, leaden cart over the bridge to the other team’s side.