Italy is fabulous at festivals and some are totally worth planning a trip around. You do risk some bad weather, but, it is the best. My nephew was here for two weeks for a full immersion in food and festivals. We planned the trip around the Viareggio Carnivale celebrations, which are on the 4 Sundays before lent starts, called Quaresima. Viareggio celebrates with huge floats, which take almost a year to make, add the dancers and the smaller floats and it is totally insane. It is a blast as locals also dress up, in silly costumes and confetti and foam fly all over. Keep your mouth closed.Some of the floats are HUGE like this elephant, many have moving parts and dancers and a band.
May of the floats are political or religious satire.Here we have Merkel and the Pope.
Some simply have a theme and are amazingly intricate.
The Octopus was the seven deadly sins.
Costumes are worn by both big and small.
This tiny “float” was to celebrate Chinese New years and was made from the yellow pages.
Most of the floats are made from “Cartapesta” paper-mache.There is a huge history in Italy of paper-mache artisans. The floats have a master artisan and a team.
There are huge hangers where they create the structures and then work on covering them and decorating. It is possible to book a tour of the “city” where they create.
Viareggio is located on the coast. It is a fairly wealthy area and the beach boardwalk is incredible, mostly art deco buildings. In season, the beaches are all “pay” entrances where you rent your umbrella and chairs. Each beach area has a private bar, changing rooms, bathrooms.
Every festival has food! At this edition there was a GREAT street foods of Italy section. Foccaccia from Genova, arrosticini from Abruzzo, tiny lamb kebabs, which is what we got. Then Bombette from Puglia, small stuffed beef rolls. The local bread cooked in clay “plates” called teste then filled with meats.
I hope you can come and experience this yourselves!
For more information check out the official site here.