Italy is famous to be a country where traditions are deeply rooted and there is always something to celebrate with a traditional food or festival or music, and the Carnival is one of the most suggestive animated and amazing festivity where masks are a huge distinguishing characteristic.

The first traces of the word Carnival are around 1400. It comes for the latin “carnem levare” or “to remove meat” to indicate the banquet before the starting of the Catholic Lent period where meat was prohibited. Carnival is in February; this year the celebrations will start on the 4th and they will end on thusday 21st of February that is also called “Martedì Grasso” or “Fat Tuesday”, from the catholic tradition, is the last day when you are allowed to eat fatty food, then Lent starts.

You could find a lot of Carnivals in Italy that are characterised by parades in public spaces, typical food like the Chiacchere and the Frittelle (follow our blog, we will give the relevant recipes) and the original dressing up and masquerade but likely the most important are the one in Viareggio near Florence and the one in Venice.

The Viareggio Carnival was born on the Fat Tuesday in 1873 and after 139 years is still one the most spectacular and appreciated. Every year more than one million spectators are gathering in the town to attend the magic of the great parade of big floats in papier–maché. The floats are like real travelling theatres, product of the creativity, extraordinary sculpturing and painting skills of Viareggio ‘magicians’, and are the highest example of this popular art whose language has spread all over the world. The parades take place in a 2 km. ring-like circuit on the seaside avenues of Viareggio, best known as La Passeggiata. Folkloristic bands and performers with the most original masks offer excitement, culture and tradition in a wide programme of entertainment and fun for children and adults

Again an unmissable event in Tuscany!

D.