Pinocchio Chocolate | San Miniato Basso

Before Easter, San Miniato Basso is transformed into the “village of chocolate“with the presence of producers and sellers of sweets and chocolate, master chocolatiers from the region and beyond. The event opens with a chocolate dinner in the great hall of the Casa Culturale on Thursday 22 March from 8 pm.

This will be an opportunity to present chocolate-related novelties including the Lo Scalco pork butchery (meat and chocolate) and Choco Therapy with chocolate skin treatment.
On Saturday 24 March there will be chocolate tastings in the shops of S. Miniato Basso, while on Sunday 25 the real party will take place all day long in the spaces inside and in front of the Casa Culturale.

The link with Pinocchio starts from a place that seems to have taken its name from a bridge over the ‘Rio Pidocchio’ or, according to another version, that in the area there was a farm belonging to a certain Pinocci family. Already at the end of the 1300s, at the crossroads with the road to Fucecchio, there was a tavern where the mother (according to others, the father) of Carlo Lorenzini, known as Collodi, worked for some time.

It is possible, therefore, that the name of the puppet could have its roots in this town where the young Carlo used to run around the streets, once in the countryside, and that Pinocchio remained impressed in his memory.