Giostra dell'Archidado a Cortona

First Sunday of June. The carousel was officially established in 1397 to celebrate the marriage between Francesco Casali, lord of Cortona, and Antonia Salimbeni, a noblewoman from Siena. Every year in the city of Cortona we remember this historic event reliving the old medieval glories: streets decorated for the party, costumes of fine workmanship, ladies, knights, flag bearers, crossbowmen, armed men, pages and civil and religious authorities. The carousel consists of a crossbow shooting competition for the conquest of the "Golden Verretta". For each "quintier" two crossbowmen compete trying to hit a target, consisting of a 15 cm dice. The die is placed in the center of a wooden round, where there are four sectors with positive scores and six outside with negative scores.