Italy

The Giro d’Italia, the Tour of Italy, is one of the top three cycling events in Europe. Along with the Tours of France and Spain, collectively often referred to as The Grand Tours, the Giro is now a worldwide attraction. The race is held at the end of May and beginning of June each year, making it the first of the three events.

Originally taken its inspiration from the French multi-stage race, the Tour of Italy, like its French counterpart, was inaugurated by a newspaper, mainly as a means of boosting its circulation. The now famous La Gazetta dello Sport organized the first Tour in 1909, just six years after the first French race. The Italian Tour began in Milan and consisted of eight stages, covering a distance of just under 2,500 kilometres. The accompanying ‘caravan’, so much a feature of modern editions of the tour, consisted of just eight vehicles!

The Giro also has its own distinctive ‘jerseys’, so that spectators can easily pick out the leading riders. The leader of the General Classification of the race, the equivalent of the French Yellow Jersey, wears instead the maglia rosa, or pink jersey. This colour was chosen because La Gazetta was, indeed still is, printed on distinctive pink paper. The maglia verde, green jersey, is worn by the King of the Mountains, the maglia ciclamino, mauve, by the leader of the sprinters, and the leading young rider can be recognised by his maglia blanca, white jersey.

In its early years the Giro was dominated by Italian riders, with Alfred Binda and Fausto Coppi each winning five events. However, some of cycling’s most famous names have won the event – many of them more than once. Spaniard Miguel Hindurain managed two Giro victories, Frenchman Bernard Hinault three and the Belgian Eddy Merckx managed five wins, including three in a row from 1972 until 1974. Merckx was disqualified in 1969 when found guilty of taking illegal drugs, which caused a major controversy at the time, even diplomatic incidents.

In recent years, Alberto Contador of Spain won the event in 2008, the first non Italian to win for twelve years. The win came the year after his victory in the Tour de France and the same year as his win in his home event, which made him only the fifth cyclist to capture all three of the Grand Tour races. Contador chose not to defend his title in 2009 so that he could concentrate on the Tour de France, although his great rival Lance Armstrong did make his Giro debut in a race which was won for the first time by the Russian, Denis Menchov. The 2009 edition of the race, one hundred years after the first, tried to recreate as many of the stages of the first race as possible. However, it was thought fitting that this centenary race should actually finish in the Italian capital of Rome instead of Milan, which it usually does.

Since the 1960s, the Giro has occasionally started in a country other than Italy, including Belgium, Greece, France, Monaco and Holland and it often passes through different countries for various stages – notably Switzerland but even Slovenia and Croatia in recent years. In 2010 the event began in Amsterdam with further stages in Utrecht and Middelburg before returning to Italy where it was won by Ivan Basso.

Visiting the Giro d’Italia, especially in the late spring, is an enticing prospect for cycling aficionados and there are a large number of tour operators who organise specialist visits. These will often give you the chance of riding sections of a stage in advance of the riders themselves and, of course, will always include accommodation.
Making private reservations is possible but it is best to learn the full itinerary of the Giro as early as you can. Hotels near the route will become fully booked very quickly – the cycling teams and the attendant media circus need a huge number of rooms – and so it is imperative to decide whether you are going to stay in a hotel, hostel, camp site or even the car well in advance of travelling.

Details of the itinerary are available on the official Giro website.

The Florence Music Festival – Maggio Musicale Fiorentino – ranks up there with the likes of Salzburg and Vienna as one of the most prestigious classical music festivals in Europe. Established originally as a biennial opera festival in 1937, the Maggio Musicale became such an instant success that, in 1937, it was made an annual event and its scope widened enormously. Now, 73 seasons later, it has become the centrepiece of Florence’s musical programme – beginning at the end of April and continuing through until June.

The Festival has its origins in the traditional Florentine Calendimaggio, on 1st May, when the city welcomed spring with displays of flowers, music and theatre. Florence, the city which claims the production of the world’s first opera, has, of course, always been close to heart of Italian culture. Now, the central venues of what was Italy’s first music festival, include the magnificent Teatro Communale, the Teatro della Pergola, the Teatro Piccolo and there are also concerts in the wonderful Boboli Gardens behind the Pitti Palace.

In the years since its inception, most of the classical music world’s greatest names have appeared at the Maggio Musicale – artists of such international pre-eminence as Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti, Herbert von Karajan, Igor Stravinskij, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bela Bartòk and Richard Strauss. Even luminaries of the stature of Max Reinhardt, Luchino Visconti and Franco Zeffirelli have designed sets and costumes for the Festival.

Opera has always been, and still is, very much at the forefront of the musical offerings on the programme each year. Even though the economic crisis led to government funding cuts, meaning two operas were cancelled on the 2009 programme, it is still the cornerstone of the proceedings. In addition, there are many concerts and ballets of the highest quality.

When conductor and composer Vittorio Gui established the Maggio Musicale, one of his stated ambitions was to promote operas which were visually, as well as musically, dramatic. This has been a constant preoccupation with successive Artistic Directors and has led to some spectacular productions being undertaken. Indeed, the Maggio Musicale was the very first festival to enlist specialists to develop the visual and aesthetic qualities of productions, in addition to the musical aspects.

The 2000 seats in the amphitheatre of the Teatro Communale – built originally as an open-air concert hall but re-built after both bombing and flooding into the magnificent auditorium it is now – is an acoustically perfect place in which to listen to wonderful music. Likewise, there could be few outdoor venues more breathtakingly beautiful than the Boboli Gardens and the Piazza della Signoria, the civic centre of life in Florence.

A recent, and popular, innovation at the festival has been the development of the Maggio OFF programme, which features both younger artists as well as avant-garde and ethnic music. A word of warning, though; if you visit the official web site of the Maggio Musicale to discover the next programme, it can be disconcerting to read the details of a concert with OFF written in capital letters next to it – especially when you have heard about cut backs in funding! Rest assured, there is still a full calendar of events in both the main festival and the Maggio OFF.

There are many who claim that Florence, and Tuscany in general, is at its most beautiful in the spring. With the local Amerigo Vespucci airport and the Galileo Galilei airport at Pisa within a short distance; with excellent rail links to the rest of Italy; and by virtue of its position right at the heart of the country’s road transport links, Florence is a very accessible city. With a variety of accommodation inside the city – as well as the possibilities offered in the surrounding Tuscan countryside – spring at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, in the company of some of the world’s greatest performers, sounds like an enticing prospect.

The Scoppio del Carro, literally the Explosion of the Cart, is a gloriously noisy way of spending an Easter Sunday in Florence. A technicoloured mix of pagan and Christian ceremony, this is the day when more than 10,000 people crowd into the stunningly beautiful Piazza del Duomo to witness a firework display at eleven o’clock in the morning.

The origins of this bizarre festival go back to the First Crusade at the end of the eleventh century. Pazzino de Pazzi, a member of an eminent Florentine family, was apparently the first person to climb the walls of the city of Jerusalem when it was recaptured by Christians. He was rewarded for his gallantry with the gift of three flint stones taken from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which he brought back to Florence and which were placed in the Chiesa degli Santi Apostoli. It became customary to use these flints to ignite a ‘holy fire’ each Easter, which would be taken through the streets of the city – both to celebrate Christ’s resurrection and to try to ensure there would be a bountiful harvest that year. The wagon that is now used in the procession was first introduced more than 500 years ago.

This wagon, known as the brindellone – the wobbly, tall one – is decorated with flowers and herbs and then pulled by two pairs of local white oxen through the streets, totally full of fireworks. It used to have a local beggar perched precariously at the top of the 30 foot structure throwing sweets to the crowds and four little boys sitting in specially designed little confessional-type boxes but ‘health and safety’, or perhaps common snese, put an end to that. The procession begins at Via del Prato whilst, simultaneously, another, bearing the flints to start the fire, begins at Santi Apostoli. Most people congregate in the Piazza del Duomo but there are good vantage points to see the procession along the route; the best probably being along Borgo Ognissante and Via Vigna Nuova.

There is a mass in the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Flore – commonly known as the Duomo because of its magnificently constructed Brunelleschi dome – in which many of the congregation are dressed as 15th century nobles. Dozens of flag throwers perform in the square until, at 11 am, when the bells begin to peel. Using the flints, the bishop, in the centre of the cathedral, then lights a dove-shaped rocket. This ‘dove’, the columbina, subsequently speeds, along a wire, through the nave of the cathedral, out into the Piazza and into the cart, igniting the fireworks.

What follows is a twenty minute cacophony of sound, colour and smoke that is sure to terrify and thrill in just about equal measures. The bells keep ringing but you stand little chance of hearing them now; apparently it’s best to keep your mouth open as it lessens the chances of your ear drums exploding!

Florence is a city where history completely envelopes you, and at Easter, when the whole of Tuscany is beginning to show glimpses of the spring, it is at its scenic best. With sights such as the Ponte Vecchio, the Uffizi and the Boboli Gardens it is still like a living Renaissance museum.

Although the local airport, Amerigo Vespucci Aeroporto di Firenze, is steadily increasing its international traffic, the larger Galileo Galilei airport near Pisa also offers possibilities. Florence’s main station, Santa Maria Novella, is only about 500 metres from the historic centre of town and has excellent links with the rest of Italy. Driving to Florence should also be a delight in the spring, with probably snow still at the tops of some of the mountains and excellent motorways to Milan, Modena, Verona and Genova to the north and Rome to the south.

If Florence is one of those cities on your ‘must see’ list – and I suspect it is on most of them – then what better time to go that to witness the incredible Scoppio del Carro.

The Ivrea Carnival must surely be one of the most colourful, messy, unruly and downright enjoyable carnivals in the whole of Italy. What a claim! However, it is one that can be backed up by the facts. Where else could you enjoy a four day battle with oranges, whilst pretending to attack Italians dressed as Frenchmen. Well, you can in Ivrea.

Ivrea, for the large part of the year, is a quiet little town of only about 25,000 people, in the Turin province of Piedmont. But, every year at Carnival, the place goes berserk.

As in most Italian towns and cities, carnival goes back a long way, and varying stories compete as to how and why certain traditions were established. In Ivrea, for example, there are two distinct threads to the tradition. At the beginning of the 19th century, this part of northern Italy was under Napoleonic control and so many of today’s carnival elements parody this time. The red, dangly nightcaps of the time; the Napoleonic General; the fights between the oppressed masses on foot and the ‘masters’ on the wagons – all these are evident today.

But then there’s also the local legend of the local Duke who was allowed to spend the night with any newly married woman he chose. One mugnaia, miller’s daughter, refused to carry out his wishes and chopped his head off. Now, each year, one of the locals is elected mugnaia and the thrown oranges represent the duke’s head.

After one or two preliminary ceremonies, the carnival ‘proper’ begins in earnest on ‘Fat Thursday’, the week before Shrove Tuesday. This is when the power of the city is officially handed over to ‘The General’, who oversees the events that are to follow. On the Saturday the miller’s daughter will be presented from the Town Hall balcony, followed by a procession and a firework display. And the first of the Orange Battles. Until the Tuesday afternoon, there will be one gigantic battle every day.

Basically, there appear to be nine separate teams, on foot, who have specified battle positions and attack the procession. For example, The Chessmen group – there were 16 in the first team; the number of pawns – assemble in the Piazza Ottinetti and hurl their oranges from there. Obviously the people on the wagons propel their own oranges back. Now, visitors are allowed to enlist in the teams, although spectators are not ‘permitted’ to throw oranges. They have been known to ‘retaliate’ when caught by a stray missile, though. There are supposed to be ‘safe’ spectator zones, to enable you just to mock other people getting ‘oranged’ but it’s best not to rely on them being totally secure. All in all, it is a time of complete chaotic mayhem. And everybody loves it.

One of the more ridiculous aspects of the whole affair is that they don’t even grow the oranges in the fields around Ivrea; most of them are imported from Sicily!

On the Monday of Carnival there will be bands and groups performing in the streets at night, and on Mardi Gras itself it all finishes with a giant bonfire of wagons in the town centre and then a fairly solemn ‘funeral’, with the general closing the festivities until the next year. On Ash Wednesday everybody reconvenes in the now orange-covered square to partake in the traditional cod and polenta – and regale each other with stories of their gallantry, no doubt.

Ivrea is easily reached by train on the line from Turin to Aosta and it’s also very close to the main A5 road connecting the two cities. Turin airport is 40 kilometres away and there are good rail connections between there and the town.

There are several hotels in the town itself, and even some ‘Bed and Breakfast’ places. For the past few years, the council have provided excellent facilities for those with camper vans, only 500 metres from the carnival areas. If you like the idea of helping throw a quarter of a million kilograms of oranges during February’s Carnival time, then check out the Ivrea Carnival website for more information.

The Viareggio Carnival has become, since its humble beginnings in 1873, one of Italy’s most popular and famous festivals. This otherwise charmingly modest Tuscan seaside resort – known to generations of schoolchildren as the beach where Shelley’s funeral pyre was placed – for just a few weeks before Easter each year, attracts over a million visitors to its streets.

The origins of the Viareggio Carnival crosses interesting class boundaries. A group of wealthy, middle class businessmen decided to organise a town parade of floats decorated with flowers, going up and down the streets. As a protest against high taxes, a large group of working class people attended the parade wearing masks and mocking several of the town’s authority figures. From these opposite positions, the Viareggio Carnival developed.

The main defining characteristic of the parades that are held now are the truly enormous allegorical papier-mâché figures depicted on the floats of the procession. These mammoth works of art – the largest can weigh an unbelievable 40 tons – satirise leading political and public figures or sporting and pop personalities – and come complete with moving arms, opening mouths and rolling eyes. Amazingly, though, each figure will have inside it, like some modern Trojan Horse, up to a dozen people who have to work complicated systems of weights and counter-weights that keep the contraption upright. In addition, there will be as many as 200 other people on each float, all costumed out and firing off ‘missiles’ into the crowd. These phenomenal creations make their slow but spectacular way along the seafront, where the proceedings come to an end with lots of food, drink and fireworks.

It takes the whole of the year to prepare the floats – they’re built in gigantic barn-like structures near the beach – and the people of Viareggio certainly get good value for their time spent constructing them with five processions in the weeks leading up to Easter.

Of course, carnival time in Viareggio is also a period of parties, street theatre, shows and general merriment. There are usually a number of concerts held during the period and the town’s bars and discos make sure that the true carnival spirit is always in full flow. A word of warning to the unsuspecting tourist, though; carnival time is a time to play practical jokes on the unwary, so stay on your guard.

Viareggio is one of Tuscany’s favourite beach resorts. With wide, sandy beaches, good shopping and excellent cafés, restaurants and discos, it’s a really family-friendly seaside town. There is even a museum in the town dedicated to the carnival’s history. Add to that the fact that it’s only 20 kilometres from Pisa and the walled city of Lucca and only an hour’s drive from Florence and you can see why many people love to come here.

It’s also an easily accessible place to visit. If you want to drive down then Viareggio is just off the A12 Autostrada, which travels along the coast from France. The town is also on the main train line between Rome and Genoa. Additionally, Pisa Galileo Galilei airport is only a 30 minute drive away which is served by a variety of airlines from all over Europe. Once you’ve arrived, there’s a wide range of hotels to select your accommodation from.

There can’t be many better family festivals than the Viareggio Carnival. A chance to get on the beach in February; great Italian food and drink; open-season for the kids to play practical jokes; and some truly unforgettable carnival caricatures. You can search for further information on the official carnival website.

The Venice Carnival, with its processions, masked balls and general feelings of merriment, is one of the world’s most recognisable events, when the streets, plazas and canals of this atmospheric city take on a completely different hue.

Although Carnival has been around since at least 1268, it has been revitalised during the last 20 years, after being outlawed during the time of Mussolini. Even before then, though, it had been in decline for almost 200 years. Nowadays, however, it has recaptured its important position in the Venetian calendar – one of the undoubted highlights of the year. The 2011 Carnival will take pace between 26th February and 8th March.

It is customary for Carnival to begin two weeks before Ash Wednesday, finishing on Shrove Tuesday or, as it’s more commonly known in Latin countries, Mardi Gras – Fat Tuesday.

One of the defining characteristics of the Venetian Carnival is, of course, the ubiquitous mask wearing tradition. Formerly, simply designed papier-mâché creations, they have evolved through the years into wonderfully ornate, and often dramatic, works of art. The mask, along with a cape, hood and cloak, has long been part of the Carnival, probably because they all allowed the wearers to overindulge themselves in total anonymity. Most masks were designed so that they were quite light – and did not interfere with the quintessential carnival pursuits of drinking, eating and flirting. Now, it’s common for visitors to either bring their own masks to Venice or, if you want to be really authentic, find your way to the Campo Santo Stefano when the Mercato delle maschere e dei costumi Veneziani is in full swing and you can pick up some genuine hand-crafted creations – not all at exorbitant prices.

On the first Sunday of Carnival, there is a truly spectacular and unique opening ceremony, The Flight of the Angel. This involves an ‘angel’ flying into St Mark’s Square from the top of the Campanile, swinging on harnesses. In recent years this has tended to be a ‘celebrity’, which either adds or detracts to the magic. It depends whether you consider Coolio, the 2008 ‘angel’, to be sufficiently angelic, I suppose; he did at least wear a heavenly white suit on his rather cumbersome descent, though.

The Venice Carnival now consists of almost two complete weeks of masquerades, processions, music, dance, street theatre and traditional ceremony and all of the city’s square and streets – along with the canals – burst into spectacular life. St Mark’s Square is obviously the focal point for much of the activity – although there are some who find it difficult to appreciate the sight of a giant screen on the Campanile and a similarly imposing tent selling cocktails – especially Bellinis, the carnival-goers favourite. The stage in the centre of the square is used for all manner of special events during the Carnival, such as Parades of Costumes, which everyone is invited to participate in. Other special occasions include a profusion of Masked Balls and Gala Dinners. As might be expected, prices for these range from the reasonable to the extremely expensive but full details can always be found on the official carnival website along with a full calendar of events.

Getting to Venice is now easier than it has ever been. The city’s main airport, Marco Polo, is located on the Venice Lagoon and, if you sit on the right hand side of the plane, you will be treated to tremendous views as you come into land. At the time of writing there are numerous budget airlines (and national carriers) serving Marco Polo from around Europe. Others fly into nearby Treviso airport which is a pleasant 30 minute drive away from the city.

Once you are in Venice, there are many hotels offering accommodation packages during the Carnival in Venice – the official website mentioned above has almost 300 to choose from.

The Venice Carnival in its current guise was a masterpiece of planning by the tourist authorities designed to attract visitors to Venice at a time of the year when their numbers would otherwise be strictly limited. However, it has developed into a genuine festival occasion and the city is a vibrant place to be at carnival time. Carnival might be associated with excess after excess – but in Venice the excesses are very sophisticated, picturesque and always engaging.

Festivals in Italy are a big part of everyday life. Because Italians always seem to be in a festive mood, their weekends are often spent celebrating food, flowers, wine, art or religion – usually combining some or all of these various elements and culminating in a cacophony of the almost obligatory fireworks. Similarly, many Italian festivals are directly linked with historical events and involve processions of hundreds or thousands of elaborately costumed people, accompanied by flag throwers and papier-mâché figures. When you add into this selection the unique Italian horse races, palios, then it becomes abundantly clear why more and more people are choosing to visit the bright and colourful festas of Italy all year round.

Venice and Florence remain at the top of the list of Italian destinations that attract visitors during their festival seasons – and, even in these two beguiling cities, the special atmospheres generated at festival time add even more magic. Venice has its world famous carnival, with its tradition of mask wearing, in the two weeks leading up to Shrove Tuesday. Its spectacular opening ceremony, the Flight of the Angel, is totally unforgettable.

Helping emphasise the city’s history and religion, the Festa della Madonna della Salute, more commonly known as la Salute, is a festival to honour one of the city’s most famous landmarks, the church known as La Salute. This festival, held in the late autumn, gives visitors the opportunity of going to Venice when the streets and canals are less busy with tourists and when the locals are celebrating the salvation of their own city. There is a similar occasion, the Festival of the Redeemer, Il Redentore, held every July, which includes the eye-catching Redentore Regatta – gondola races along the Giudecca Canal.

Florence likewise can boast some stunning festivals which, whilst being very much a part of the local populace, also have international appeal. The Scoppio del Carro, for example, has been in existence for over 500 years as an Easter Sunday celebration and is a glorious combination of religious ceremony, bizarre spectacle and ear-shattering explosions.

Italy is full of idiosyncratic, compelling festivals with at least one foot firmly in the past. The Festa della Madonna Bruna, in the historic city of Matera with its Sassi cave dwellings, is a weird mixture of religion and destruction – and fireworks, of course. In Northern Sardinia, in the small village of Sedilo, a battle of 312 AD is remembered with L’Ardia di San Constantino; a thunderous horse race around the streets.

Palios, in fact, feature quite predominantly amongst festivals in Italy. As well as the most famous of them all, held twice each year in the walled city of Siena, other places such as the wine city of Asti in Piedmont have medieval events centred around their own palio. Florence, in June, has its own version of a medieval football match and jousting features significantly at festivals in Ascoli Piceno (August), Arezzo and Foligno (both September).

Carnival – farewell to meat – is Italy’s most popular festival season and many cities have wonderfully traditional events in the early spring. Especially interesting, perhaps, for visitors are those such as the Ivrea carnival, with its orange hurling battles, and that at the popular Tuscan beach resort of Viareggio – one that features the gigantic papier mâché figures and lots of ‘missile’ firing!

Also especially worth looking out for are the various flower art festivals, infiorata, that usually take place in the early summer. Using thousands of petals and flower seeds, some truly exquisite works of art can be seen in the streets during these festivals. If you happen to be in Sicily towards the end of May then the beautiful baroque town of Noto has one of Italy’s most celebrated infioratas. Slightly different, but enchanting nevertheless, is the Almond Blossom Festival at Agrigento in Sicily earlier in the year.

Food and drink, naturally, are important in Italy and there are many local festivals celebrating various delicacies. During the late autumn, there are some excellent opportunities for lovers of Italian truffles to indulge themselves, rather more inexpensively than they normally can, at local sagras, or fairs. The Alba White Truffle Fair in Piedmont and the San Miniato Truffle Fair in Tuscany are the most visited but there are many more. You’ll also find rice, cheese, walnut and lots of wine festivals throughout the country.

Finally, Italy also hosts a great many fine international music events each year. Rome has its own Roman Summers concerts, Florence has the prestigious Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in the early summer, and there are many other superb programmes of high quality music staged annually. The atmospheric medieval city of Perugia hosts the Umbria Jazz Festival and, in just a couple of years, the Venice Jazz Festival has earned itself a fine reputation.

Festivals in Italy, whether they are large international events or simple local traditions dating back for centuries, offer a wealth of experiences for visitors to the country to enjoy and immerse themselves in the culture of this wonderfully welcoming country.