Palma Campania

The town was born of an eruption and takes its name from the wrong tree. Not far from here stood the Roman station of Ad Teglanum, which flourished in imperial times and was almost certainly destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 512; the inhabitants moved to a nearby hill, and the new village was called Palma after an olive tree that stood thereabouts. The oldest document naming it is from 997, and by 1025 a notary was already working at Palma. The old name was Palma di Nola: the present one arrives with a royal decree of 26 July 1863.

What the town is known for, though, is a carnival that resembles no other, because the floats are a secondary detail. The protagonists are the quadriglie: more than two hundred people dressed to a theme, a conductor giving the beat to brass and popular instruments — tammorre, triccheballacche, scetavajasse, putipù — and a songbook of well-known pieces reworked, performed in a circle, without breaks, moving from one historic station of the town to the next. The journalist Pasquale Iorio has defined them as a «cheerful festival platoon that has nothing in common with the society dance of the same name, danced by facing couples». The festival lasts three days and the most important is Shrove Tuesday.