Easter in Italy

If you’re traveling in Italy at Easter and you’re expecting an Easter Bunny that just happens to speak Italian, you’re going to be a little disappointed. No, there’s no Italian Easter Bunny. There are, however, plenty of festivities. Easter in Italy is an incredibly important holiday - makes sense, what with the Roman Catholic Church being headquartered here and all - and the Monday following Easter is equally as important. The whole week preceding Easter, in fact, is a great time to be traveling through Italy, provided you can tolerate crowds and traffic jams, that is.

Easter in Italian is “Pasqua,” and it’s a time of religious parades and celebrations. These processions often have as their focus statues of Jesus or the Virgin Mary which are carried through the city streets by participants. One of the largest and most famous processions is in the city of Enna in Sicily on Good Friday, where more than 2,000 friars parade through the city. One of the oldest Good Friday processions takes place in the Abruzzo city of Chieti.

Of course, because Italy is such an overwhelmingly Catholic country, you’ll be able to find an Easter Sunday mass in whatever town you happen to be in that week. If you’re looking for the biggest of them all, however, you’ll have to head to St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. For a more personal and local tradition, be on the lookout for Catholic priests throughout Italy to be stopping in private homes and shops in order to bless them for Easter.

Traditional Easter foods in Italy include eggs, artichockes, roasted lamb, a special sweet bread called “Colomba” (made in the shape of a dove) and chocolate eggs, which almost always are hollow and have a special prize inside.

Some of the Italy Easter traditions will seem familiar or at least logical, while others are wonderfully inexplicable. Take the “Scoppio del Carro,” for instance (pictured at right). This event, literally translated to “Explosion of the Cart,” takes place in Florence dates back more than 300 years. In it, a massive decorated cart with some fireworks attached to it is wheeled into the Duomo square (pulled by white oxen, no less) after Easter Sunday mass, where the fireworks are then lit. I guarantee if you’re in Florence at Easter you’ll have truly unique holiday memories and photographs!

Easter in Italy is traditionally a holiday spent with family, but the Monday after Easter is another story - it’s still a nationwide holiday, and this one is all about hanging out with friends, often gathering for picnics. Easter Monday is called “La Pasquetta,” or “Little Easter,” in Italian. Many cities will hold outdoor events on Pasquetta, including concerts and games. The games often involve eggs, like the famous egg races of Tredozio. One unusual Pasquetta game takes place in the town of Panicale in Umbria, where the goal is to roll giant wheels of cheese around the city walls in the quickest time and using the least strokes.

As mentioned, Easter can be a really interesting time to visit Italy, especially to see all the ancient traditions (which, it should be noted, are carried out not for tourists but for Italians - which makes them even more interesting), but because the whole country has vacation time during Easter week it can be a difficult time to get around. If you plan to visit Italy during Easter, I recommend booking your hotel or hostel way in advance (and be prepared to pay a little more than you might the week before or after), and try to not be moving from city to city much during that week. Plan to set up camp in one spot and not be driving or crowding onto trains, and you’ll be much happier.

By Jessica | Permalink

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