Easter holidays in Italy: a week-long celebration through religious and secular traditions

Easter traditions in Italy are many and differ from region to region: this is the most important holiday after Christmas.
If you want to visit Italy during “Pasqua”, italian for Easter, you surely want to know more about their traditions. Keep reading to discover traditional recipes, secular habits and religious celebrations.

Italian children nowadays mainly spend the Easter holidays keeping busy decorating eggs, drawing cards and writing poems for their families and collecting chocolate eggs to open and look for for surprises on Easter day. Luckily, though, most of Italian religious, artistic and culinary traditions are still very much alive and visiting Italy during Easter is a fantastic way to immerse in their culture.

  • Before Easter: Palm Sunday, Altar of Repose and Good Friday

Religious celebrations for Catholics start from Palm Sunday, a Christian feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter.
To commemorates Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, people join worship services, which include a procession holding palms in their hands, to represent the palm branches the crowd scattered in front of Jesus as he entered Jerusalem.
Since palms are not commonly found in Italy, people are given olive trees’ branch: during Palm Sunday they go to Church, join the Mass and then bring home an olive tree branch which they usually keep at home as a sign of Peace and Devotion all year round.

On the night of the Thursday preceding Easter, Catholics prepare themselves joining a special ritual called “Altar of repose”: the Communion hosts are consecrated during the Mass of the Lord’s Supper and are placed or “reserved”, to be used on the following day, Good Friday. Between the time of Jesus’ death and his resurrection, mass cannot be celebrated. Therefore communion hosts cannot be consecrated and any hosts used on Good Friday must have been consecrated previously. People on Maundy Thursday go to their local Church and sit in front of the Hosts, in Chapels adorned with flowers, singing and praying until late at night.

The next day is Good Friday. On this day Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his Death on the Calvary through solemn processions where scenes from the Passion and Death of Christ are brought alive with actors, costumes and symbols traditionally linked with Jesus death like nails, the hammer, the Crown of Thorns, the Cross and so on. All over Italy, hundreds of processions with different rituals take place on Good Friday. In Rome, the Pope also participates in a huge procession that starts at the Colosseum.

  • Celebrating Easter in Italy: Pasqua and Pasquetta

Forget the solemn rituals of Good Friday. The day of Easter and the Monday after are public holiday throughout Italy and bring with them joy and celebration.
Since Spring has already come, it is wonderful time to be in Italy. Unlike Christmas, when families prefer to stay indoors, at Easter everyone seems to be in the streets, going to church and celebrating in their own way. There is the reason behind a famous saying in Italian that goes like this: Natale con i tuoi, Pasqua con chi vuoi, literally: Christmas with your family and Easter with whomever you like.
Many leave for their hometown, many take a trip to a different region or abroad, others simply spend the Easter day at home with their relatives eating traditional dishes. The Monday after is commonly referred to as “Pasquetta” (little Easter): Italians look forward to it because they usually plan to spend it outdoors, usually making a pic-nic or going to the sea. This has little to do with religion: it is mainly an excuse to enjoy the warm weather in nature with friends and nice food, playing ball and card games and chill out.

  • Traditional Easter food and recipes in Italy: Colomba and Easter Eggs

Each region of Italy has different dishes but chocolate eggs with surprises and “Colomba” cakes can be found throughout the country. “Colomba” (“Easter Dove” in English, since doves are the symbol of peace, just like the olive branch mentioned before ) is an Italian Easter cake created in Milan at the start of 1900. It can be regarded as the counterpart of the Italian Christmas desserts, panettone and pandoro. More popular among children (and adults as well!) are big chocolate eggs wrapped in glittery paper , displayed in the windows of every coffee bar and supermarket, sometimes many months before Easter. These eggs are hollow, but each one has a toy or present inside and this keep kids thrilled to find out their surprises. Nowadays many brand produce eggs for adults as well, putting inside present more suitable for grown-ups. Bunnies, on the other side, are not very common in Italy: for Italian the symbol of birth is mainly the Egg.

Unlike eggs and “Colomba” other dishes and recipes are peculiar to every region. The most famous are sweet and savoury versions of “Pizza di Pasqua” in central Italy, Sweet “Pastiera” cakes and savoury “Casatiello” pies in Naples and the very sweet “Cassata” in Sicily, which you can find all year round, anyway. Popular food all over Italy during Easter is also Salami and eggs (also eaten for breakfast), artichokes and lamb dishes.

  • Easter celebrations in Rome and Florence

If you are in Rome and you’re interested in joining religious parades and masses during Easter, don’t miss the traditional Via Crucis taking place at the Colosseum on Good Friday at 9:15 pm.
On Easter day go to St. Peter’s Basilica at 10 am and join the Mass. At the end of the celebration Pope Francis will give his blessing from the balcony and you can participate to the “Urbi et Orbi” message he will give to the crowd in Piazza San Pietro.

If you have planned to spend Easter in Florence you will take part of a very special tradition called Explosion of the Cart: it starts around 10am, when a priest become rubbing three flints together until they spark and light an Easter candle; this candle is then used to light coals placed in a special box kept on the Cart. The procession delivers this Holy Fire to the Archbishop of Florence near Santa Maria del Fiore, better known as the Duomo. The procession is accompanied by drummers, flag throwers and actors dressed in historical costumes, together with city officials and clerical representatives.

Let us make our Easter trip to Italy unforgettable. Plan a fantastic tour to make the most of your journey.
Private and small group tours are available, with friendly and licensed English-speaking guides who will illustrate the art, traditions and historical facts of the main Italian cities.
Contact us for more information and to book your tour.

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Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel – 10 Facts you may not know

The Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, which Michelangelo painted between 1508 and 1512, is one of the most relevant work of High Renaissance art. Five million tourists each year enter the Vatican to admire its beauty, but most know little about it. Below, you can find 10 compelling facts about the Sistine Chapel, its creation and interesting anecdotes about Michelangelo, Popes of the time and much more.

  1. Sistine Chapel: look up – but not just at the ceiling

    Sistine Chapel is famous for its ceiling’s frescoes, but these are part of a bigger scheme of decorations. The Chapel includes not only the large fresco called The Last Judgment, which Michelangelo painted to adorne the sanctuary wall, but also wall paintings by other main painters of the 15th century, such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli and Pietro Perugino, as well as a number of large tapestries by Raphael Sanzio, which illustrate the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

  2. The restoration of Sistine Chapel: nudities revealed

    Between 1980 and 1999, art restorers worked on a big portion of the Sistine Chapel, including Michelangelo’s ceiling and his fresco known as “The Last Judgment”. Hundreds of art experts meticulously took away layers of deposits and soot, managing in brightening the colors of the paintings and making them look fresh and spring-like. The most interesting fact is that this restoration unveiled the work of Pope Pius IV. Following the “Fig-Leaf Campaign“, led by Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini, the Pope ordered to place loincloths and fig leaves to cover human nudes during the 1560s.

  3. The “Creation of Adam” might actually depict a human brain

    In 1990 Doctor Frank Lynn Meshberger described what people had never seen for centuries — in the fresco “The Creation of Adam“, just behind the figure of God, you can spot an anatomically accurate image of the human brain! Remember the world-famous image where God and Adam reach for each joining fingers? Well, Meshberger succeded in linking each detail of the painting to an anatomical part of the brain. But how could Michelangelo know so much about the structure of the human brain? That’s probably because Michelangelo had been dissecting bodies since he was 18, mainly in the Monastery of Santo Spirito in Florence where the corpses often were taken from nearby hospitals.

  4. Conclaves – meetings where Popes are elected – have been held in the Sistine Chapel since 1492

    In order to avoid prolonged deadlocks during papal elections, local authorities decided to the seclude the cardinal electors in a location, until they finally agreed to elect the new Pope – a decision which is still announced to the public by a cloud of white smoke which goes out of the Sistine Chapel’s chimney. The location of this secluded meeting, called “conclave” (from the Latin “cum clavis” – meaning “with key”) was not fixed until the 14th century. After the Western Schism elections have always been held in Rome, except in 1800, when French troops invaded Rome and Cardinals had to meet in Venice, under Austrian protection. It must be noted, though, that the election of a new pope has been held in different locations in Rome since 1492 and Sistine Chapel became the sole venue only in 1870.

  5. A bit of etimology: Nephew, Nipote and Nepotism

    The Sistine Chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, but the Pope who commissioned Michelangelo’s frescoes in 1508 was Julius II, the nephew of Sixtus IV. It’s interesting to know that the English term “nepotism” derives from the Italian “nipote“, meaning “nephew”. This is because Popes had a habit of favouring relations and not only nephews: many times popes’ “nephews” were actually their sons!

  6. Michelangelo DID NOT paint the Sistine Chapel lying down

    Contrary to what most people believe Michelangelo wasn’t lying down when working o the frescoes. The artist and his assistants created a platform extended over half the area of the chapel to allow them to stand upright and reach above their heads. This wooden platform was attached to the walls through brackets. The idea that Michelangelo painted on his back might derive from the 1965 film “The Agony and the Ecstasy” in which Charlton Heston interpreted the genius working on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.

  7. Sistine Chapel in numbers

    The chapel’s paintings cover 12,000 square feet (1,110 square metres), which is about one-sixth the size of a football pitch.
    An average of 2,000 people crowd into the chapel at any one time.
    Michelangelo worked on the Chapel for about 4 years, between 1508 and 1512
    The vaulted ceiling of Sistine Chapel rises to 20.7 metres (68 ft)
    God is depicted 6 times in the ceiling frescoes
    Sisto conducted the first Mass in the chapel on August 15, 1483

  8. In the beginning was a starry sky – earlier version of the Sistine Chapel

    Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II della Rovere in 1508 to cover the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, frescoed about 30 years before by Piero Matteo d’Amelia with a star-spangled sky. Who knows what the chapel looked like, before Michelangelo worked on it?

  9. Forbidden fruit… Or forbidden fruits?

    In the ceiling panel depicting the Temptation, Michelangelo’s tree is a fig. But medieval traditions report that when Eve is in the Garden of Eden, she is tempted by the snake with an apple. This idea may have originated in a play on words. In the Latin text of the Bible the word ”malum,” for evil, is used in the phrase ”the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” (”boni et mali”). But the Latin for apple is also ”malum,” hence the analogy.
    Certain Hebrew legends refer to the fruit of evil using different kind of fruits: figs, grapes and the ”etrog’, citrons are all used in the same context. That is probably why Michelangelo chose to paint a fig in his Temptation panel.

  10. The pain of being pure at art – Michelangelo’s suffering at work

    Besides being a gifted sculptor and painter, Michelangelo Buonarroti was also a very good poet. He wrote energetically about his suffering, leaving us many details of the unpleasant sides of working on the Cappella Sistina’s ceiling. Due to the unnatural position he had to hold when painting the ceiling, Michelangelo’s face was always covered in paint and he also developed many conditions, such as goiter an a knotted spine: he describes all his problems in a sonnet, which you can read in a wonderful English translation by Gail Mazur.