A Festival for Chestnuts

Maybe more fun in the sun

“Perched on the picturesque shore of Lago Maggiore, Ascona is one of the most uniquely charming, Italian-speaking corners of Switzerland,” according to this 2016 Condé Nast Traveler piece. “... this small town cracks open harvest season with the annual Chestnut Festival, or Castagnata” where “local food vendors, artists and craftspeople line the lakefront piazza, while leather apron–clad cooks tend to giant steel pans filled with castagne or marroni (“chestnuts” in the local Italian dialect).”

Enticing. Last year, I learned that Ticino (Tessin in German) hosts these festivals, likely as a result of efforts in the 1980s and ‘90s to revive southern Switzerland’s chestnut culture. Apparently the chesnut’s prevalence as a food staple diminished in the 1800s when the potato showed up. When researching my first chestnut newsletter, I looked up the festivals again and saw Ascona’s was happening on October 5 and 12. So last weekend, Gabe and I went to Ascona, via two trains and then a city bus packed with Swiss Germans. 

We first visited Ascona in February 2023, on our Should We Really Move to Switzerland visit. The trip consisted of staying with my parents, looking at our future apartment two floors above my parents’, walking around Basel, riding trains and boats, and visiting Locarno and Acona. We sat outside on Ascona’s lakefront piazza, drinking Aperol spritzes and said, “Yes, we should move here.” 

This second trip, for chestnut research, was less idyllic. There were vendors, artists, and craftspeople, though I don’t know how local they were. The marronatt, the leather apron-clad cooks who roast the chestnuts were there too, with the chestnut-filled steel pans over wood fires. They roasted their chestnuts under a steady rain, occasionally retreating to a pop-up tent for cover.

The photos promoting the festival are tightly framed, prominently featuring the marronat and their chestnut pans. Based on those pictures, I imagined more chestnut roasters. We saw five men, separated from the tourists by barriers that created a chute leading to a cash register. Congratulations to whomever came up with this layout, as it would have been difficult to take a picture of the marronat without going through the chestnut purchasing line.

We each bought a bag, in between hiding in a restaurant for lunch and then hiding in a different restaurant for dessert when the rain picked up again. At least we had bags of warm chestnuts in our pockets to keep our fingers toasty. 

After the rain slowed, we eventually found a second group of roasters on the other end of the piazza. Both roasting areas had live music. On the further end, two men played accordion and mandolin, giving that part of the piazza an appropriately Italian vibe. On our end, a two-man band played “Achy-Breaky Heart.”

I love a niche festival. In Maryland, we went to a paw paw festival (this, not papaya), where I ate my first paw paw and learned how to ID the tree. I still think about the Woolly Worm Festival in Kentucky, which I never made it to. Now I won’t have to wonder about the chestnut festival, though I would give it a second try in fairer weather. And this view is always worth it.

What kind of specific festivals have you been to? There’s an onion festival in Bern in November, so that might be my next one.

Sources

The Best Autumn Festival in Switzerland

Chestnuts: Swiss cultural heritage is enjoying a revival