Festa History
The popular Italian Family Festa is the oldest and largest event of its kind on the West Coast. The Festa has shared the full richness of being "Italian" with hundreds of thousands of patrons. It has become a superb showcase in the folklore of glorious Italy, with its Italian Village atmosphere, food, costumes, art and photo exhibits, games, and musical entertainment.
It's purpose was to honor the City of San Jose during the 1977 Bicentennial celebration. It was the first ethnic festival to be held in downtown San Jose. Our Festa helped to identify San Jose as the "City of Festivals" and as a diverse ethnic community that promotes the achievements of many cultures. This inspired a number of ethnic organizations to hold their festivals in downtown San Jose and influenced their festival formats.
Featured at our Festa is the pony-drawn San Jose Italian Festa Cart which is covered with paintings and sculpture of San Jose history. It has been a display item by local social organizations.
Our San Jose Italian Festival Cart is so named because of the art work of paintings and sculpture that historically tell a story of the City of San Jose. In Italy a Sicilian cart's art work tells the story of Sicily. In Naples, the cart's art work tells a story of Naples, and the same is true of other cities or regions that feature festival carts. Our San Jose Festival Cart was designed by Professor John DeVincenzi for the 1977 Festival which was held in honor of the City of San Jose. It was San Jose's bicentennial birthday. Individuals donated their time in the construction, painting and sculpture of the cart, and with the restoration of the cart in 1996.
The Festival also includes grape stomping contests, a cheese rolling contest, a salami toss game, expanded bocce ball games and exhibitions, ballroom dancing in a tented area, a Sunday night Tarantella dance contest, costume contest, pizza toss demonstration, Italian card game playing and instruction, the Historic Italian Photo Exhibition, the Christian Cross exhibition, and a Sunday morning Christian Mass.
An essential part of our Festa deals with the promotion of Italian culture, and that includes food. Our entertainment includes local performers who perform some non Italian music, songs and dances. Varied arts and crafts vendors sell products representing many ethnic cultures.
Locations of past IAHF Festas
2003 - Discovery Meadow, San Jose
2004 - No Festa this year. The IAHF Cultural Center was renovated
2005 - Santana Row
2006 - Santana Row
2007 - Willow Glen
2008 - Willow Glen
2009 - Willow Glen
2010 - Guadelupe Park, San Jose
