Italy Advisor

No Easter bunny? Then you’re in Italy for Easter holidays, my dear.

The Italian Easter celebrations  (“Pasqua” in Italian), has a lot of rituals and traditions to understand and enjoy. The Monday following Easter (la Pasquetta) is also a holiday in Italy. Over the weeks before Easter, in Italy  you can assist to a lot of processions and masses.
Good Friday and Easter Week Processions are held in many towns on the Friday or Saturday before Easter.

Many churches have special statues of the Virgin and Jesus put out only on these occasions, meaning in the Easter processions. Parade participants are often dressed up in traditional ancient costumes. Lots of Via Crucis are displayed all over Italy! Olive branches are often used instead of or along with palm fronds.

The oldest Good Friday procession in Italy? Probably it is the one held in Chieti,  Abruzzo region. The procession with Miserere played by 100 violins is very touching. If you are in Abruzzo, then go to Sulmona and celebrates Easter together with La Madonna Che Scappa in Piazza (The escaping Virgin). On Easter Sunday you will dress in green and white, because they are the colors of peace, hope, and resurrection, and you will meet with so many people coming from all the region in the main piazza. A woman will play the Virgen Mary and she will be dressed in black. She moves to the fountain and doves are released and the woman will change the dress wearing the colour green.

Enna, in Sicily, promotes a large procession on Good Friday; more than 2,000 friars dressed in ancient costumes! And Trapani has a Good Friday procession that lasts 24 hours!
The biggest and most popular Easter mass? If you are in Rome you can’t miss the Pope helding it at St. Peter’s Basilica. On Good Friday, the Pope celebrates the Via Crucis near the Colosseum.

In Florence, on Easter it has been displayed for centuries the Scoppio del Carro (literally, the explosion of the cart).

A huge, decorated cart goes through Florence, dragges by white oxen until it reaches Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence’s historic center. The Archbishop then will send a dove-shaped rocket into the cart, starting the fireworks held inside. A parade in medieval costumes follows the symbolic explosion into the Spring.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2012 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Events in Italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.