The third weekend of September is one of the busiest of the year for town festivals. Saturday 19 is San Gennaro's day, and Naples waits for the patron saint's blood; Sunday 20 is the third Sunday of the month, the date dozens of towns have chosen for their Madonna or their saint. In between there is a friar who flew, a puppet that dances with fireworks on its head and a market that has run since the Middle Ages. Here is what is happening, day by day, with links to the page of each festival.
Friday 18 September
Copertino and Osimo, the flying friar
Saint Joseph of Copertino is the saint of levitations, patron of students facing exams. He was born in Copertino, in the province of Lecce, in 1603, and died in Osimo on 18 September 1663: that is why both towns celebrate him on the same day. In Copertino the celebrations run from the 16th to the 19th, and since 1945 the satirical paper «La Macennula» comes out for the occasion. In Osimo, where the saint lies in the basilica dedicated to him, he has only been patron since 1967: before that the patrons were Saint Victor and Saint Corona.
Genzano di Roma
In the Castelli Romani hills the town celebrates Saint Thomas of Villanova. In September Genzano also hosts, since 1989, the Festa del pane casareccio, the homemade bread festival run with the producers' consortium: Genzano bread is one of the products the Castelli are known for. The town council publishes the exact programme.
Saturday 19 September: San Gennaro
Naples, the blood and the Treasure
On Saturday morning the cathedral will be full from dawn. The archbishop turns the reliquary with the ampoules before the faithful, and the city waits for the blood to liquefy: when it does, a white handkerchief is waved and applause breaks out; when it is slow, the «relatives of San Gennaro» call him out loud from the front rows. Gennaro was bishop of Benevento and, according to tradition, was beheaded at Pozzuoli in 305. The first document about the liquefaction dates from 1389, and the prodigy is awaited three times a year: in May, on 19 September and on 16 December, the anniversary of the Vesuvius eruption of 1631. Next to the cathedral, the Chapel of the Treasure, consecrated in 1646, keeps the silver bust of 1305, and it belongs not to the Church but to the city, through a lay institution. The page for the Feast of San Gennaro keeps all the dates of the year.
Trecase and San Gennaro Vesuviano
On the slopes of the volcano the saint is invoked against eruptions. In Trecase the wooden statue leaves the sanctuary, and when the procession returns the Burning of the Bell Tower is lit, a fireworks show that pretends to set the tower on fire. In San Gennaro Vesuviano, which owes the saint its name, the fair founded in the seventeenth century by the marquis Scipione Pignatelli stopped on the 19th for the Mass said from the convent balcony.
Abbadia San Salvatore and Raddusa
On Monte Amiata, Abbadia San Salvatore celebrates Pope Saint Mark: the abbey keeps the reliquary bust made by Mariano d'Agnolo Romanelli in 1381 and an eighth-century chasuble attributed to the saint. In Sicily, in Raddusa, the September feast of Saint Joseph is a thanksgiving for the wheat harvest: two Masses, the procession and then a stroll among the stalls of Via Regina Margherita. In Centuripe five days of celebrations for Saint Prosper and Saint Rosalia end on Saturday, and on Sunday it is the turn of the Saint Prosper market.
Sunday 20 September
Campo di Giove, the dance of the pupa
On the Maiella, the feast of Saint Eustace carries the statue in procession to the saint's church. The following evening, Monday, the pupa comes out: a puppet of reeds and papier-mâché, moved by a person hidden inside, dancing to the accordion with a wheel of fireworks on its head. It is an old peasant fertility rite: the puppet used to be burned and its ashes scattered over the fields.
Scanno and Poli
Saint Eustace is also celebrated on the 20th in Scanno, where the traditional women's costume wove red silk cords into the hair for this very feast, blue ones for the Madonna delle Grazie and brown ones for Our Lady of Mount Carmel. In Poli, near Tivoli, legend places on Monte Guadagnolo the appearance of the stag with a cross between its antlers that converted the saint.
Andria, Mazzarino, Uscio and Brienza
The third Sunday of September is the date of many patron saint feasts. Andria honours Saint Richard and the Madonna dei Miracoli; the town also owes its April Fair to the rediscovery of the saint's body in 1438. Mazzarino celebrates Maria Santissima del Mazzaro in the late-Baroque basilica designed in 1739. Uscio, above Recco, celebrates Our Lady of Sorrows next to the parish church of Sant'Ambrogio, whose origins go back to 570. In Brienza it is the day the Crucifix, after three months in the sanctuary on top of the mountain, returns to the mother church for the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.
Before you set off
The dates of patron saint feasts are those of tradition: the times of processions, fireworks and concerts are published every year by parishes and local tourist associations, and it is worth checking them before travelling. All the week's festivals, town by town, are in the events section of each town page; the next agenda comes out on Friday 25 September, with the food festivals of October.
