While we are wrapped up with construction here in Washington, DC, we take to you Cannara, when Frances Kidd writes about the local infiorata festival. 

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The infiorata is a festival marking the procession of Corpus Domini celebrating the Eucharist. Corpus Domini falls on the Thursday following Trinity Sunday (8 weeks after Easter Sunday); the infiorata and procession are the following weekend.

The streets of a number of cities in Italy are covered with “paintings” made from flowers, leaves and seeds gathered in the surrounding areas.

Flower carpets have been used for centuries to mark important days in the calendar of the Catholic Church.

A different group of friends and/or neighbors join together to take responsibility for each street; there was also a work done by local school children.

The work starts well before the weekend when people head out into the fields to gather that flowers, leaves and branches that will be used. For several days before, in fact, you can see some of the ladies of the town sitting outside their houses patiently stripping the petals from their stems. They must be stripped so they can be fed through a machine which grinds them into the time pieces used for the art. (For example, this year I spent some time stripping leaves from olive tree branches and dried magnolia leaves from their stems since the large stems can’t go through the machine).

The design has been prepared in advance and a color guide is placed on a nearby wall. The “canvas” has been prepared in advance; sometimes there is merely a chalk outline; other times there is an actual paper pattern to follow.

The preparation work on the flowers and leaves continues up to the moment they start to fill in the design.

It’s Italy…so there has to also be food and drink. Grills are set up in some of the small piazzas around the town and on other streets, and the residents bring out what seems like an endless parade of food. I felt especially luck because Elena DiFilippo (from the DiFilippo Cantina) was working on the same street as me, so we enjoyed their wine.

At midnight, spaghetti and porchetta were served up in the main piazza.

The workers have to keep up their strength because the work generally continues most of the night…quite an effort for such an ephemeral result. The mid-day Sunday procession passes along all the streets following the mass; and by early evening, most of the flowers are gone.

This year for the first time, there was also a fair in Cannara on Sunday where it was possible to buy local produce and crafts and the museum had a special exhibit to mark the occasion.

This is a lovely local celebration that was delightful to participate in!