Fiera Antiquaria di Arezzo

Born in 1968 and planned by the antique dealer and collector Ivan Bruschi (whose house, precious collection's case, is now a museum), the Antiquarian Fair of Arezzo has been the first antiquarian manifestation having a regular monthly cadence and a lasting success over the time. A success favoured by the knowledge, the solicitations, and the dedication of its deviser. It immediately was news, as shows the newsreel "Radar", which was filmed in the third edition of the Fair.
During the days of the Fair, Piazza Grande, which is a very particular square with its irregular and inclined surface, (encircled by patrician towers and palaces, dominated by the austere mass of the roman Church, and bounded by the Loggias drawn by Vasari), becomes a market full of stalls, antiques, collectors, curious, and obviously of tourists. The courtyards of the palaces and the Loggias are full of visitors. Shops grow busier and the stalls, full of any kind of objects, invade streets and lanes, villages and squares of the entire historical complex, changing the aspect of the town.
The regular expositors are more than 500 and comefrom every part of Italyoffering with their object a wide view of cultural traditions and regional costumes. Moreover, thanks to the success of the opened exposition, the shops of the restorers and of the antique dealers have grown up. Nowadays in Arezzo there are more than 100 antiquarian shops, a number that during thirty years of fair has duplicated, in fact in 1968 there were not more than fifteen antiquarian shops!
In many cases the shops reflect the same heterogeneity that we find in the fair: furniture, drawings and object, all different both for their époque and for their quality are muddled giving to the visitor the pleasure of their discovery.
By the shops of searchers and pickers there are many shops with selected objects that offer more marked specialization for collectors and connoisseurs: furniture and furnishings, still life, religious pictures, drawings of any époque, jewels, watches, silvers, old books and printings, modern antique collecting, scientific instruments, radius and gramophones, musical instruments, toys.
From the edition of October 2001, we are planning a new project of promotion and communication to make the fair more stimulating and the stay in Arezzo more pleasant, thanks to the contribution of some events, planned to attract an always new and cultured public.
Every first Sunday of the month and the previous Saturday there are more than 20.000 (there were even more than 30.000!) people who come in Arezzo only to visit the antiquarian fair.
The hunt for the valuable object or for the missing piece of a collection begins even before the opening of the fair, when the goods is still packed in the trucks, and it ends on Sunday at sunset after many negotiations.
As the American writer Frances Mayes shows in her book "Beautiful Tuscany", we can affirm that in every house in Arezzo and in many other Italian towns there is an object, a picture or a piece of furniture which has been found and bought in Arezzo Antiquarian Fair, the most old and bigger Italian antiquarian fair.