Easter in Italy

Easter Italian traditions from North to South

Beetween religious ceremony and Easter Eggs, Easter in Italy is a magic Holiday, taking advantage of the good weather and discovering different traditions that Italy has to offer!

Religiously, Easter is the most important feast of the year, because it commemorates the most significant episode: the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

With Easter, we also welcome spring and a new cycle of fertility and abundance.

For these reasons, pagan traditions are still alive, mixed after a long with the sacred ones, giving different results in each region of Italy

Important symbols are Easter Eggs, symbolizing reproduction, birth and resurrection, and the Italian Colomba, a representation of peace inevitable on Italian Tables

Keep going on reading to find how Easter's celebrated differently in Italy from North to South!

During the Holy Week extraordinary rites are celebrated from north to south, showing ancient tradition and uniting people in the name of the Faith.

Easter in Northern Italy

From Piedmont, in Novara and Vercelli, to Lombardy, in Bergamo and Mantua, during Friday the streets of the historic centre are full of people involved in processions and representing the Passion.

A special initiative happens every year in Bormio, with a parade of floats decorated with flowers and moss brought by young people in traditional costume

In Emilia Romagna, the famous ''Living Via Crucis'' in Modena, is an event where every 3 years the inhabitants of the village compose living paintings depicting the various episodes of the Passion of Christ.

Easter in Centre Italy

One of the most suggestive Easter Traditions Happen in Florence, with the famous Cart Explosion taking place in Piazza del Duomo, an ancient tradition with a show of lights, sparks and fireworks to celebrate the Easter of the Resurrection of Christ.

Rome, the Eternal City, also offers a spectacular celebratory moment on the evening of Good Friday , during the famous Via Crucis ceremony, every year the Pope himself leads an impressive and extremely exciting procession that starts from the Colosseum and arrives at the Temple of Venus, in memory of the path made by Jesus on Mount Calvary.

The city for the occasion, is illuminated with candles and torches , and marked by suggestive stops in Rome.

Easter in the South

In the South Easter Traditions are always involving, in fact is there where the greatest number of events are concentrated.

Sicily, for instance, is a region rich of Easter traditions and rituals.

Starting from the Mysteries of Trapani, where there are twenty sculptures representing the episodes of the Passion and which parade from 2pm on Friday to dawn on Holy Saturday, together with twenty bands musical, women dressed in black, hooded, boys in costume with lit candles.

Really suggestive and colorful are also the Real maestranza in Caltanissetta and famous ceremony in Prizzi with the Dance of the Devils and Adrano, celebrating the victory of good over evil with dances, processions and theatrical re-enactments.

In Puglia,Taranto there are three evocative and fascinating processions , in which the traditions of Easter lasts over forty hours, where to live truly timeless moments which reach a real solemnity up to go back in time.

Lastly the Mysteries of Calitri, in the province of Avellino, Campania, a rite datig back the time of the first Crusade, where people are dressed in white, with a hooded head and crowned with thorns, and carry a cross on their shoulders up to the hill of the Calvary.