For four nights in September 2026, Brazilian guitar takes over some of the most striking historic settings in the province of Siena. Márcio Rangel, a left-handed guitarist and instrumental composer from northeastern Brazil who plays a right-handed instrument upside down, brings his Tour Tuscany 2026 to a roofless medieval abbey, a Medici fortress, a hilltop citadel above San Gimignano and a fourth town in the Elsa valley.
The dates run from September 5 to September 16, and Rangel comes to Siena as the guest artist of the Siena International Guitar Festival. If you are in Tuscany in September, this is one of those evenings where the venue is half the ticket.
Table of Contents
The four September concerts
Here is the tour as announced so far:
| Date | Venue | Tickets |
|---|---|---|
| Saturday, September 5, 2026 — 9:00 PM | San Galgano Abbey, Chiusdino (Siena) | €10 at the abbey box office |
| Thursday, September 10, 2026 — 9:00 PM | Fortezza Medicea, Siena | Free admission |
| Saturday, September 12, 2026 — 7:00 PM | Rocca di Montestaffoli, San Gimignano | Free admission |
| Wednesday, September 16, 2026 — 9:00 PM | Piazza Bartolomeo Scala, Colle di Val d’Elsa | Free admission |
San Galgano is the only paid date: 10 euros, sold at the abbey box office, with reservations by phone at +39 0577 049312. The other three concerts — Siena, San Gimignano and Colle di Val d’Elsa — are free to attend, with no booking and no ticket desk: the full programme is now confirmed.
One practical consequence for visitors: none of these concerts is sold through the usual online ticketing sites, so there is nothing to book from home. For the free dates that means turning up early; for San Galgano it means calling ahead or buying at the abbey box office.
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September 5: a guitar inside the roofless abbey of San Galgano
The tour opens on Saturday, September 5, 2026, at 9:00 PM, inside San Galgano Abbey, in the countryside of Chiusdino, about 30 km (19 miles) southwest of Siena.
Cistercian monks built the abbey between 1218 and 1288. Plague and centuries of abandonment emptied it, and by the 18th century the roof had collapsed for good. What is left is a Gothic shell of bare walls, pointed arches and empty windows, with grass for a floor and the sky for a ceiling — which is exactly why concerts keep coming back here.
A short uphill walk away sits the Montesiepi Chapel, where a real medieval sword stands driven into the rock: the origin of Tuscany’s own sword-in-the-stone legend.
Read also: San Galgano and the Sword in the Stone: Discover Tuscany’s Legendary Abbey
Tickets cost 10 euros at the box office of the abbey itself — this is the only date on the tour with a paid entrance. Bring a jacket: a roofless church in the Sienese hills cools down fast once the sun is down, even in early September. There is almost no public transport out here, so nearly everyone arrives by car, and there is a free parking area a short walk from the site.
September 10: back to the Medici fortress in Siena
Five days later, on Thursday, September 10, 2026, at 9:00 PM, Rangel plays the Fortezza Medicea in Siena, the brick fortress Cosimo I de’ Medici had built in the 1560s right next to the historic centre, today a public park with ramparts you can walk along at sunset.
It is familiar ground. He performed at the same fortress in July 2025, during his previous Tuscan tour, and this year he returns to the city as the guest artist invited by the Siena International Guitar Festival, whose logo appears on the tour’s official poster.
Read also: Márcio Rangel Live in Tuscany: the 2025 tour through Siena, Colle di Val d’Elsa and Monteriggioni
The organisers have confirmed that the concert starts at 9:00 PM and that admission is free. There is no booking and no ticket desk: just turn up in good time if you want a decent spot.
Staying overnight? Here are our handpicked hotels in Siena.
September 12: Brazilian guitar, a medieval fortress and Vernaccia wine
The third stop is the one that packs the most Tuscany into a single day. On Saturday, September 12, 2026, at 7:00 PM, Rangel performs at the Rocca di Montestaffoli, the ruined fourteenth-century citadel at the highest point of San Gimignano, the UNESCO World Heritage town famous for its skyline of medieval tower houses.
The date is not just a tour announcement: the town hall’s own summer calendar, Accade d’Estate 2026, lists “concert by guitarist Marcio Rangel” at the Rocca di Montestaffoli on September 12 at 7:00 PM, credited to the Siena Guitar Festival.
According to the tour material, the same day also includes a tasting of Vernaccia di San Gimignano and local produce from 1:00 PM to 8:30 PM, run together with the Vernaccia di San Gimignano Wine Experience, which has its tasting room inside the Rocca.
A good way to use the day: get there in the early afternoon, walk the towers and the two main squares, taste the white wine that made this hill town famous long before mass tourism found it, and end the evening with Brazilian guitar inside a medieval fortress. The concert is free.
September 16: the tour closes in Colle di Val d’Elsa
The tour ends on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, at 9:00 PM, in Colle di Val d’Elsa, a two-level town between Siena and Florence, known across Europe for its crystal glassmaking. The upper town, Colle Alta, is the medieval half, strung along a ridge above the valley.
Rangel played there in July 2025, in Piazza Duomo, in the heart of Colle Alta. This year the stage moves down the hill to Piazza Bartolomeo Scala, the square locals call “Piazza Nova”, in the lower town — so you can drive straight to it, without climbing to the medieval upper town. Admission is free.
The left-handed guitarist who plays upside down
Márcio Rangel was born in Mossoró, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte. Left-handed, he learned on a standard right-handed guitar simply turned over, without reversing the order of the strings — so the bass strings sit where the treble ones usually are.
That upside-down setup forced him to invent his own fingerings, and it became a signature. He is an instrumental composer, not a singer. His playing moves between Brazilian music, jazz, blues, flamenco and world music, and over his career he has shared stages with Tommy Emmanuel, Stanley Jordan, Frank Vignola, Laurence Juber, Darryl Jones, Stochelo Rosenberg, Fabrizio Bosso, Flavio Boltro and Nonato Luiz.
Italy is not new territory for him either: he has toured the country repeatedly and has a long-standing relationship with Siena and its international guitar festival.
Turn a concert into a few days in the Sienese hills
All four venues sit within a small triangle southwest of Florence, which makes the tour easy to fold into a trip rather than chase across the region.
- Base yourself in Siena. The city is the natural hub for three of the four dates and works well for a few nights: see our guide to Siena.
- Rent a car. San Galgano has almost no public transport, and the concerts end late. Our guide to renting a car in Florence covers the paperwork and the ZTL traps.
- Coming from Florence? The abbey is roughly 90 km (56 miles) away, about an hour and a half by car; for the city-to-city leg, see how to get from Florence to Siena.
- Fill the daytime. Between concerts you have San Gimignano’s towers, the walled village of Monteriggioni and Siena’s Piazza del Campo within easy reach — our day tours from Florence cover several of them.
Travelling around Tuscany this September? Stay online from the moment you land with a Holafly eSIM and use the promo code TIPS to save on your plan. Full guide here.
Dates, times and admission were confirmed by the tour organisers on September 1, 2026, and cross-checked with the official concert poster, the Fondazione San Galgano events calendar and the Comune di San Gimignano summer programme. The venue in Colle di Val d’Elsa was confirmed by the organisers on the same date.
Tuscany fills its summers with music in beautiful places. Not many of those evenings put a Brazilian guitar under the open sky of a thirteenth-century abbey for ten euros — or, three times out of four, for nothing at all.
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