Annual Italy Events

Annual International Gold Exhibition to celebrate one of the most famous gold production centers in the world. Italy is the world's largest exporter of gold jewelry and, up to a couple of year ago, was also the largest producer with an estimated three billion pieces of Italian-made jewelry in private hands around the world. There is one jewelry shop for every 2,500 Italians which is almost three times the rate of France or Germany. According to a gold sector expert, Enrico Finzi, Gold has been a way for Italians to say to themselves and to each other that the misery of the past was over. Exhibition of it is a clear indicator that life is getting better. The four southern regions of Sicily, Calabria, Puglia and Campania alone account for 50% of purchases annually, many of them made by workers returning from their prosperity in the North and wishing to show that they're successful. The vast majority of the nation's 33,000 goldsmith jewelers are tiny operations, spread out around the country with special concentrations in four areas: Vicenza, Arezzo, Valenza and the Torre del Greco suburb of Naples. Vicenza does everything but pave the streets with the precious yellow metal during this celebration. Its myriad of vendors and craftsmen fill their exhibition halls with their finest designs which are now necessary in order to compensate for the falling prices of gold.