La Bonissima: Modena's Food Festival in Piazza Grande

Three days when the square goes back to being a market

For three days in mid-October, Piazza Grande stops being only Modena's UNESCO drawing room and returns to the job it has done for centuries: a market. La Bonissima is the festival of Modena's local food producers, and it fills Piazza Grande, Piazza Torre and Piazza XX Settembre with around thirty makers from the province.

In 2026 it ran from Friday 16 to Sunday 18 October. Producers' stands open at 12:00 on the Friday and at 9:00 on Saturday and Sunday, closing at 20:00; the stands that serve food stay open until midnight. Getting into the market costs nothing.

The organisers count more than six hundred Modenese food products, over twenty of them DOP, IGP or DOC, plus the products carrying the "Tradizione e Sapori di Modena" mark. In practice: within a couple of hundred metres you find things that are not in the shops, because they are made in quantities too small to get there.

Where the name comes from

The name is not marketing. It comes from a statue. La Bonissima is a medieval stone figure of a woman set in a niche of the Palazzo Comunale, on the very square where the festival is held.

Who she actually is, nobody knows for certain. The most credited theory ties her to an old office that policed the market's weights and measures — from the dialect bona ésma, "good estimate" — and holds that she once carried a set of scales. Local legend prefers another version: a noblewoman who, during a famine, opened her stores and handed out bread and money to the poor. Historians are still arguing. Meanwhile she has been watching the square for centuries, which makes her a fitting patron for a market.

What we tasted

We went on the Saturday morning, shortly after the 9:00 opening, and that is the right moment: you can talk to the producers without being jostled.

The cured meats. The Salumificio F.lli Guerzoni stand — sixty years of traditional Modenese salumi, as their sign says — is a forest of hanging hams stamped Prosciutto di Modena DOP. It is sliced in front of you, and the difference from a supermarket counter lands on the first slice.

Gnocco fritto. L'Osteria del Gnocco Fritto fries it on the spot and serves it with prosciutto, lonza, coppa, pancetta and ciccioli. It is the dish that explains Modena better than any guidebook.

Balsamic vinegar. At Acetaia Montale Rangone the bottles stand in a row and you taste the traditional one next to the younger one: the fastest way to understand that "balsamic vinegar" covers two very different products.

And then the things you don't expect. Chestnut-cured pancetta at three euros from S. Rocco. Live demonstrations of ciccioli making and grape pressing. Workshops on gnocco fritto and tortelli, bookable in advance. Showcooking, the Palio del Parmigiano Reggiano, a vertical tasting of Prosciutto di Modena. Several tastings are free but limited: book them through visitmodena.it or the WhatsApp number the organisers publish.

Three things worth knowing first

Go in the morning. Saturday and Sunday open at 9:00. Between 9 and 11 the producers have time to talk; after midday the square is packed and it becomes a different experience.

Bring cash. The larger stands take cards, the smallest producers do not always.

Do not eat beforehand. Between tastings, gnocco fritto and sharing boards, lunch happens whether you planned it or not.

When it comes back

La Bonissima is an annual mid-October fixture; the next edition's programme appears on labonissima.it a few weeks ahead. If you are planning an autumn weekend in Modena, it is the date to build the trip around — a weekend when the city puts within three hundred metres what you would otherwise drive around the province to find.

From Martin's Home to Piazza Grande it is a thirteen-minute walk. The car stays where it is.