Partying Like It’s 1599 at the Medieval Festival

For one day every September at Fort Tryon Park in Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood, the bright greenery surrounding the Met’s Cloisters extension is turned into a Renaissance festival featuring hundreds of knights, jesters, jousters, maidens, and monks… as well as more than a few time-travelers in modern garb.

Thousands of spectators came out to try on impossible corsets and heavy armor, watch muscular men attempt to bludgeon one another with all manner of savage weaponry, and eat giant turkey legs (and just about any other food imaginable, as long as it was on a stick).

Photos by B.A. Van Sise for the Village Voice