Wine Festival 2021

From 9^th October 2021 to 16^th October 2021, the Municipality of Limassol organizes the Wine Festival in the Municipal Gardens of Limassol from 19:00 until 23:30 every night. This year we celebrate sixty years of history of the Wine Festival with impressive opening and closing ceremonies at the Municipal Garden’s Theatre “Marios Tokas” with an upgraded program with popular performances where tens of artists, groups and companies from Greece and Cyprus will entertain the people every evening.

During the festival, the visitors will have the opportunity to visit and be entertained at the four open-air restaurants where there will be special popular music in each one of them, at low prices, maintaining the high levels of quality and hygiene. There will also be a kiosk where the wineries will sell bottled wine in special prices and a specified kiosk that will sell bottled coumandaria from the villages they produce it in the region of Limassol. There will also be exhibitions of photography, cartoons and lectures on the subject of wine-production. The Municipal Gardens will be lit artistically and be decorated theatrically. A big screen of dimensions of 3 x 5 meters and will be erected opposite the Vrakas figure to present videos and photographs from the sixty years of life of the Wine Festival. For our young friends there will be performances of  shadow plays (Karagiozis) and exhibitions of traditional crafts. Collector’s items (glasses) will also be sold commemorating the anniversary for the sixty years of Wine Festival.

This year, Wine Festival expands to the wine producing villages of our region. There will be two events on the first and the last Sunday. The first event will take place on the 10^th of October 2021, early in the afternoon at the traditional village of Arsos and the second one on the 17^th October 2021 at the village Doros, which is known for the production of coumandaria wine. The participants will have the opportunity to taste the pure hospitality of Limassol’s villages with folk songs, dances, wine and sweets made with grape juice.

The Festival takes place at the Municipal Garden of Limassol, at the east side of Limassol, by the sea. Tickets are sold in each of the three entrances. Entering the Festival through the main entrance, from the south side of the Garden the visitor can see the giant figure of a Cypriot vine grower with the traditional local dress. The Vrakas – as is called from his baggy trousers – is the emblem of the Wine Festival since 1961.

Every evening thousands of people visit the Wine Festival to enjoy the relaxed and pleasant atmosphere that is created by the wine and the delicious food of local dishes on fixed low prices, the folk music, dances and songs, as well the comedy sketches with humor and satire. An evening at the Wine Festival in Limassol will be an opportunity for somebody to live the Greek tradition of Dionysiac celebrations, where all the residents  of Attica, bourgeois and farmers were joining in many common symposia, offered free by the state, and taste new wines, participating in group dances, songs, poetic competitions and theatrical performances. During these celebrations a number of slaves were freed, whereas those who remained enslaved were allowed to live for a while as free men and have fun for a brief period of time.