Festival Lent - the biggest multicultural open-air festival in southeast Europe!

Festival Lent is one of the most renowned trademarks of Maribor. By the bank of Drava river and elsewhere in the city centre, a genre-colourful but harmonic palette of different performances takes place – opera and ballet, theatre and dance, jazz, classical and world music concerts, street and chanson singers, concerts of ethno music, folklore evenings, street theatre festival, performances and activities for children and sport challenges – alltogether more than 1.500 events on more than 30 stages in 16 days. There is no way to imagine a summer atmosphere in Maribor without this festival anymore.

The core of the festival are the performances on the Central Stage on the river Drava – a big floating stage right behind the Water Tower, the southeast end of the medieval city walls.

The old part of the city by the river was in the mediaeval times the most vivid part of the town, with the port for rafts, a lot of pubs, shops and workshops – a vivid business, transit and entertainment centre. Today this part of the city is known as Lent (from German – a harbour) and is probably the most romantic part of modern Maribor with the nostalgic narrow paved streets, embellished with attractive inns, bars, galleries, shops.... One of the renovated façades supports the venerable Old vine, more than 400 years old, which is recognised as the oldest vine in the world.

This beautiful part of Maribor is the ambient for Festival Lent, one of the biggest in Europe. In the last week of June and the first week of July its unforgettable hustle and bustle and fun attracts to its stages up to 600.000 visitors!

This year some of the festival highlights are: Black Stone Raiders (feat. Will Calhoun, Living Colour and Darryl Jones, Rolling Stones (http://blog.bourelly.de/general/black-stone-raiders-european-tour-june-2011/), June 26^th, Vlatko Stefanovski Balkan Superselection, June 28^th, Monster Magnet, June 29^th, Asian Dub Foundation, June 30^th, Jimmy Cliff, July 7^th, Trilok Gurtu and Balkan Brass Battle (Fanfare Ciocarlia vs. Boban & Marko Marković (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8ca-4WggBs) , July 8^th.

International Folklore Festival Folkart from June 28^th till July 2^nd will again host some of the best dance groups, this year we have groups from Bulgaria, Croatia, China, Ireland, Nepal, Kalmykia/Russia and Slovenia.

From July 1^st till July 3^rd you can attend one of the cooking-shows in Street Food Festival SladoLENT and from July 5^th till July 9^th you can follow attractive street theatre performances all over the city centre.

During the day, Art Camp in the city park is taking over. Workshops for children and youth, dance, theatre and puppet performances, art exhibition Forma Viva and a lot of other interesting and creative activities are organised from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4 to 8 p.m.

Most of these events are available with full festival ticket which costs € 22. There are some performances where a special entrance fee is necessary – with the full festival ticket each is available for only € 3. All the events in the city part are free of charge.
(More on Tickets here)

Come and visit Maribor during Festival Lent from June 24^th till July 9^th.
Let's go. Let go. Lent go.
Let’s go festivalenting!