Oktoberfest Besides the Oktoberfest, there are other public festivals that take place at the same location. In April/May it's the Munich "Frühlingsfest" (spring festival) and Tollwood Festival in December with 650,000 visitors. After the Oktoberfest the next largest public fairs in Germany are the "Cannstatter Volksfest" in Stuttgart with about 4.5 million visitors each year, the "Cranger Kirmes" in Herne (Wanne-Eickel) (the largest fair in Northrhine-Westphalia) with 4.4 million visitors, the Rheinkirmes in Düsseldorf (called largest fair on the Rhine), and the "Freimarkt" in Bremen (the biggest fair in northern Germany) with over 4 million visitors per year each. Also noteworthy
Asti's Festival of Festivals Saturday evening event usually attracts the higher number of visitors. Over the course of two days, the festival now attracts about two hundred thousand visitors each year. The Sunday event starts with a colorful parade that winds through the streets of the city, depicting rural values and traditions of the province with more than three thousand characters in authentic period costumes. The beginnings of the festival of Festivals can be traced to an idea of Giovanni Borello, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Asti, in 1974: his plan was to augment the Douja d'Or, essentially a wine competition, with