[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he village of Saillon holds every four years a medieval festival. Saillon is a village in the canton of Valais in Switzerland located between Martigny, famous for the Fondation Gianadda, and Sion.
The village with the old houses and the narrow streets is the ideal place for this kind of events. Ahead of the festivals, most of signs of modern times are hidden such as traffic signs, post boxes or dust bins.
The 7th edition took place from September 7th-11th. A lot of groups specialized in this kind of events where invited. On beautiful late summer days under a deep blue sky and high temperatures, the many visitors could enjoy watching craftsmen at work, groups performing demonstrations of fencing, chivalry, Italian flag throwers, watch a falconer with his birds, sheep dogs and geese demonstrations or listen to various storytellers. A lot of scenes in the colorful medieval streets and corners of the village performed not only by the invited groups but also by villagers dressed accordingly. Arianna Savall performed some marvelous medieval music on harp inside the fully crowded church.
No wonder this program attracted over 20’000 enthusiastic visitors during these bright sunny days to see a pretty unusual event more than 1’100 performers.
As photographer, I was particularly pleased with this event having photogenic subjects in all streets just waiting to be photographed.
The next event is scheduled September 10th-13th 2015. See http://www.pbase.com/tcom/saillon2011 for more photos of the event.
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