It’s Carnival Time!
Carnival is almost upon us. Every year at around this time, the shops start filling up with extravagant-looking costumes in various sizes so even the tiniest tot can participate. There are streamers and masks, plastic swords and mouth-watering pastries with baffling regional names like bugie, chiacchiere and lattughe – literally lies, chats and lettuce! Don’t ask!
For the little town of Putignano in Puglia, preparations for Carnival are perhaps a touch earlier and a shade more elaborate than most. Once a year, beginning on Boxing Day, this small place of just 30,000 souls hosts an event that is quite spectacular in terms of its history, pageantry and variety. In short, it knocks almost any other Carnival into a cocked hat. Putignano, you see, is home to one of the oldest Carnivals in the world as well as having Europe’s longest parades. Quite a feat for such an otherwise unremarkable town.
The Putignano Carnival dates back to 1394 and draws massive crowds of Italians and foreign visitors alike. Everything is geared towards the big event on Shrove Tuesday evening, which this year falls on Tuesday, 16 February. There are hours of eating and drinking to be done as locals don colourful costumes and parade through the town, followed eventually by the event everyone has been waiting for – a grand parade of papier-mâché floats which wends its way through the streets. The evening culminates in the awarding of the Primo Premio for the best float. A prize well-worth having at over 20,000 Euros.
We are not talking here about the kind of papier-mâché you might have done with some wallpaper paste and bits of old newspaper at primary school. These floats are works of art, taking months of preparation. There’s no re-using last year’s effort either, they are made from scratch each time. Their themes are legion, but often poke fun at Italy’s eminently satirisable politicians.
There’s still time to experience this unique Carnival for yourself and if you can’t make it, then there is a very good first hand account in a 2010 article in The Independent you can read here.