Guide to Sights and Festivals in Italy

Visit the Carnival in Venice, the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto and the ruins of Pompeii.

Narrator: The Italians know how to party. Fuzing hot art with ancient tradition, they throw elaborate backdrops and costuming and hey, presto! You have the recipe for a fabulous festival. Venice Carnevale is a festival of performance, art, music and masquerade. Held each year in February, Venice, which bustles with tourists anyway, gets even busier as it swells to host Carnevale. Carnevale is first recorded in the 13th century but was outlawed for 200 years from 1700 when Venice fell into Austrian rule. The festival was banished again from the 1930s and it wasn’t until a mask shop opened in Venice in the 1980s that the tradition began again. There are three specific types of masks. The most famous is the all white mask, which was originally made from wax. It made it easy to eat, drink, dance and flirt, all while maintaining your mystique. Masks were originally used to hide people’s identity. Carnevale was a time for wild partying and celebrations and being unidentifiable meant people could do whatever they like with impunity. The masks were used to upturn Venice’s social order. You could be anyone, do anything and avoid the judgment of the people around you. However, wearing masks during other times of the year could land the wearer with harsh penalties. Even today, the appeal of being dressed up without being recognized has a certain allure and intrigue. The hills are alive with the sound of music, or so the song goes. But every year, high up in the mountains of Italy, the hills truly do come alive for The Sound of Music. Held in the town of Spoleto, the festival Dei Due Mondi, or festival of two worlds, is one of Italy’s most important cultural events. Over a three-week period, the small town thirsts with the program of theater, music, dance and visual arts. The festival began in 1958 when composer Gian Carlo Menotti decided it was time to celebrate the country’s artistic achievements. Gian Carlo Menotti: My goal was to prove to myself and to the world that art can be a very important force within a community. And so that I achieved, now you see Spoleto is a flourishing town, thanks to the artists. Narrator: Although it’s a small town, Spoletto was chosen as a festival site because it has a Roman amphitheater, tow indoor theaters and a variety of other public spaces. It is located on the foot of the Apennine mountains, which also provide a breathtaking backdrop. In the south of Italy, outside Naples lies one of the world’s most important archaeological sites. The ruins of Pompeii are world renowned. Not only do they provide magnificently preserved building ruins but it also offer human cast frozen in time. In 79 A.D., almost 2000 years ago, a nearby volcano, Mt. Vesuvius erupted, spewing lava and ash across the ancient city. As people tried to run, or just accepted their fate, the lava encased them and created permanent statues of people in motion. The site was buried for almost 1700 years but was rediscovered accidentally in 1748. Today, it provides the best insight we have into life during the Roman Empire. Antonio Irlando: The real problem is that here they start work and spend only a little bit of money that often gets wasted. So work never gets finished. The root of the problem is a lack of vision and organization in the overall management of the ruins. Narrator: Two and a half million tourists visit the site each year and it has now been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It remains a fascinating site for archaeologists and many people visit numerous times to better understand the history.