Menton Lemon Festival
Queues, feathers and um... lemons
When you say that you are visiting Menton’s Fête du Citron, many people imagine a sedate town hall with a few weathered farmers, baskets of lemons with their waxy green leaves still on, and homebrew limoncello. That sounds quite nice actually. But this festival is, in fact, very different and … a big deal. Packed trains from Nice bring citrus fans from all over the world to ram the streets of Menton, drink lemonade in reusable branded cups, and elbow people out of the way for a good picture.
This year’s theme was the Olympics, and it must be the only place in the world where you can see giant sculpted men wrestling inside Greek vases made of lemons. 140 tonnes of citrus are used for the two-week party.
Access to the garden with the impressive installations is free, but the big crowds come for the Corso - a parade along the beachfront that lasts all Sunday afternoon. It is quite the party with groups of acrobats, feathered dancers, and vibrantly dressed performers on stilts in between the big lemon floats.
Gleeful volunteers riding on the creaking contraptions shower the crowds with confetti. The atmosphere is joyous. Sort of. People have been standing up for a while and want a good view. The numbered seats are very pricey, so there are a lot of bodies jostling around the edges of the parade. They really want to take unobstructed photos and other people are in the way. Things get a bit shouty, but it’s mostly good-natured.
This is the sort of event where you are desperate for it to finish just so you can all sit down. But what a weird and amazing day and a worthy celebration of the wonderful lemon!
