Texas Renaissance Festival

The Texas Renaissance Festival in Todd Mission is the largest Renaissance festival in the United States, drawing more than 600,000 visitors each season. Begun in the 1970s on a former strip-mining site, it now covers close to 60 acres divided into eight themed villages, with roughly 400 shops selling handmade goods such as pottery, jewelry, metalwork and woodcarving. Performances run continuously on more than 25 stages, and the cast, shopkeepers and staff wear 16th-century dress, with buildings and grounds styled after Renaissance-period architecture and landscaping.