The 2007 edition of Lucca Comics and Games was held in early November, and once again, was a lot of fun.

The weather was great, and once again attendance toped 25 000 on the busiest day, with over 90 000 over the course of the 4 days of the main event.

The main attraction of course, especially if you are not a comics or game fan, is the cosplay. As Tonio described it: "it's like a paradise for photographers". Cosplayers are always happy to pose for photographers, especially when they are 6-year old, so quite a few of the pictures were taken by our budding reporter.

This year there were lots of super heroes, including some that we had seen last year like Batman and Cat Woman, and the entire Incredible Family quite a few Pirates, mysterious angels and just as many daemons, plus of course the appropriate number of swords. An amazing number of characters from Japanese comics and cartoons that I knew nothing about. And, more surprisingly, Homer Simpson, Sponge Bob, the Ginger Bread Man and Pacman. Even the police were here in style, with both a Lamborghini and... very cure blue Segways. I don't know if they had an helicopter nearby, to keep an eye on all the flying characters.

More links, more photos:

• Saturday Cosplay
• Sunday Cosplay
• Flickr Group (nearly 1300 photos at last count!)

The official name of this event is LUCCAdigitalPHOTOfest'07. It includes 15 exhibitions by great photographers, in the kind of wonderful settings that Lucca can offer, like the Palazzo Ducale (off of Piazza Napoleone), the Palazzo Guinigi (near the Torre) or Villa Bottini (on via Eliza), and even an ex-tobacco manufacture (via Vittorio-Emmanuelle).

The complete list of exhibitions is available on the expo website.

We visited nearly all of them over the weekend, and my favourite, in no particular order, were:

• Trent Parke (Palazzo Ducale), for his extraordinary use of light, and even better use of darkness, (see some of his pictures on Magnum)
• Francesco Tommasi (Ex Manifattura Tabacchi), from Lucca, for his colorfull pictures of the Italian rollerblading community (after too much black and white my eyes desperately needed a little color), (interview)
• Oded Balility (I also found his name spelt "Balilty") (Ex Manifattura Tabacchi), a poignant series on the Israeli separation barrier,
• Maurizio Galimberti, (Baluardo San Regolo, in the Giardino Botanico), for his way of showing Lucca, through clever juxtapositions of Polaroid-like images (more on his site).

At the same time as the main event, 9 bars in Lucca host exhibitions by local photographers, an event called Photocaffè, organized by the local club Photolife Lucca.

The expo goes on until December 16th, so you still have a chance at catching it this year. If you miss it, then you can always come back in 2008.

note: all pictures except one were taken by Antonio, 6, official event photographer for I Love Lucca

The Festival delle Ville (festival of the villas) is a series of events in some of the most beautiful villas of Capannori, very close to Lucca, during the whole month of September.

Most notably, it includes a hot air balloon festival, both at the local airfield, in Tassignano, and in some of the villas. On Septembre 30th, Villa Mansi hosted the event. The villa, which has been recently renovated, is one of my favourite in the region. It is really beautiful. Add to it the sight of 2 majestic balloons and perfect weather... we spent a great afternoon there.

The entrance fee (€5.50) include a ticket that was entered in a drawing to win a (brief) flight in one of the balloons. Actually there were many, many drawings, and I believe that, by the end of the day, anyone who wanted to fly had done so. But the fact that it was a drawing made it fun, especially for our son who got really excited, then anxious as all his friends got chosen before him, then ecstatic as we finally heard our number being called, then a bit scared of the noise of the burners in the balloon. He was very happy afterwards though, even though the flight consisted only of a 30 foot climb, 5 minutes up, then back to the ground. We did get a very nice view of the villa from up there though. Plus it seemed that all of Lucca was there, from schoolmates of Antonio to our baker to quite a few people that work with Gina, so we all got to enjoy the beautiful weather, chat, and generally have a good time.

December 8th is a holy day here: it's the Festa della Madonna, which celebrates the Immaculate Conception. People gathered around the Madonna dello Stellario, via del Fosso, and the Archbishop of Lucca gave a brief speech.

Then the Compagnia Balestrieri di Lucca, a historical group that keeps the crossbow tradition alive in Lucca, gave us a quite impressive demonstration of flag throwing and of sword fighting.

Web site of Compagnia Balestrieri di Lucca (in Italian).

Today is Santa Croce, a Holy Day in Lucca, dedicated to the Volto Santo, the Holy Face, supposedly a relic from Jesus time which floated from Jerusalem to the coast near Lucca in the 8th century. The whole legend is pretty intriguing.

The celebration started yesterday night. Candles were lit on the facades of buildings on the main streets of the historical center, and the Lucchese gathered to watch the procession (La Luminaria) through the town, of groups representing all of the parishes around Lucca, following the Volo Santo from San Martino Cathedral to the San Frediano Church.

It was a beautiful procession, each group walking slowly and solemnly, dressed in full ceremonial costume, holding candles, crosses or banners, and accompanied by chants or a marching band. We actually mostly listened to it, as we were having diner at the Pizzeria near the entrance of Piazza Amphiteatro. I found that this was agreat way to enjoy the atmosphere, without feeling too oppressed by the crowd. Once we were done we moved closer to the action to watch the rest of the procession, until our son decided that he had seen enough and we had to head back home.

Oddly enough, the New York Times has a much better description of the Luminaria in a 2000 article about Lucca: Within the Walls of Lucca, Both Mystery and Music.

At 11pm the fireworks started. The best place to see them is probably from the walls near Piazza Santa Maria, but we returned home and watched them from our window, over the roofs by the Torre Guinigi. We probably missed some of the action, but we liked what we could see, and the lit tower provided a great backdrop for the explosions.

More excitement followed today, which was the day of the open-air market Piazza San Michele, the first Autumn rain, and the last day of the Summer vacations for our son.