How Did Renaissance Fairs Begin?

The first modern Renaissance fair wasn’t held in medieval Europe but in 1960s Los Angeles. Phyllis Patterson, a high school English and history teacher, and her husband, Ron, an art director, offered art and theater classes for neighborhood children in the backyard of their Laurel Canyon home in Los Angeles.

On May 11, 1963, they hosted a two-day event called the Renaissance Pleasure Faire and May Market as a fundraiser for KPFK/Pacifica Radio. Held at a North Hollywood summer camp, the fair featured 60 booths, period costumes, performances and scrap-lumber sets—all built for $150. More than 3,000 attendees showed up each day, raising more than $6,000.

Photo: Actors learn their parts for a scene at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, California, 1960s.

It was “a festival of arts and entertainment modeled on the open-air festivals of medieval Europe," writes Rachel Lee Rubin in Well Met: Renaissance Faires and the American Counterculture.

Visitors enjoyed madrigal singing, period instruments, shopping for handmade crafts and “bulbous roast turkey legs”—which became a festival tradition despite their historical inaccuracy.

Photo: Two actors dressed in costumes talk during a scene in front of the Queen's throne at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, California, 1960s.

The Pattersons’ creative neighbors, many of them blacklisted Hollywood artists, played a key part in the event’s success. Phyllis Patterson believed the Hollywood blacklist made talented left-wing activists available to contribute to both her backyard classes and the actual fair, explains Rubin.

“The Renaissance faire presented an intriguing mix of countercultural antimodernism and sophisticated avant-garde,” Rubin writes, noting it became a space where suburban ideals and Cold War conservatism were openly challenged.

Photo: Actress dressed as Queen Elizabeth at the Renaissance Faire, Agoura, California, 1986.

Originally intended as a one-time event, the fair returned in 1964 at a larger venue, doubling its revenue. By 1965, it moved to Paramount Ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains, a location with more space and existing movie sets. Over the next few years, the fair expanded, running over multiple weekends and generating up to one-fifth of KPFK’s annual income, according to Rubin.

The Renaissance fair quickly became a countercultural hub. Costumed attendees—dressed in tunics, corsets, billowy sleeves and floppy hats—blurred the line between performers and audience with an emphasis on authenticity.

Photo: Actors in costume at the Renaissance Faire, Agoura, California, 1986.

“All 2,500 of the fair participants, whether they were actors or whether they were turkey leg basters, had to go through workshops,” the Pattersons’ son Kevin told The New York Times. “There were over 30 classes in Elizabethan style and life and folklore, so you could really think like an Elizabethan instead of just playing one.”

However, controversy soon followed. In 1967, the fair moved to Ventura County, where officials attempted to shut it down. Detractors called it a “hippie invasion” and alleged drug use, according to Rubin. Vendors were required to provide fingerprints, and disputes with Pacifica Radio over control of the fair led the Pattersons to sever ties, she writes.   

The fair returned to Paramount Ranch the next year, where it remained until 1988. Notable visitors in the early years included members of The Byrds, whose song "Renaissance Fair" was inspired by the event, as well as Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, members of The Doors, Harrison Ford and Nancy Sinatra. 

Photo: Actor on horseback at the Renaissance Faire, Agoura, California, 1986.

By the 1970s, Renaissance fairs had spread across the United States, blending history and fantasy with artisan markets, Shakespearean plays, jousting tournaments, food and ale. Early fairs outside California included the Minnesota Renaissance Festival in 1970 and the Texas Renaissance Festival in 1974, now the largest fair in the nation.

Rubin notes that by the 1990s, many fairs, including the original California event, were acquired by corporate entities, shifting them from grassroots events to commercial ventures.

Photo: Two knights jousting at the Renaissance Fair, 2016.

Today, more than 200 Renaissance fairs take place annually across the United States. Although many have evolved into family-friendly events, they still continue to attract alternative communities.

“If theme parks, with their pasteboard main streets, reek of a bland, safe, homogenized white bread America, the Renaissance Faire is at the other end of the social spectrum, a whiff of the occult, a flash of danger and a hint of the erotic," wrote Neil Steinberg in 2007 for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Photo: A man in 16-century costume sells pretzels at the Scarborough Renaissance Festival in Waxahachie, Texas, 2024.