Carnival of Venice

Carnival in Venice

Two weeks of feast and joy before the fast – that´s the sentence of the Carnival. And even though it´s celebrated all over the world (or at least where you find Catholics), there is no place more connected to it than Venice.

The Carnival, or Carnevale in Italian, starts about two weeks before Ash Wednesday and ends on Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday or Martedi Grasso (Mardi Gras)), the day before Ash Wednesday.

The Carnival in Venice was supposedly first recorded in 1296, when the Senate of the Venitian Republic issued an edict declaring the day before Lent as a public holiday.

The Carnival of Venice grew and became a must-see for visitors to Italy – and especially the so-called Grand Tourists: young aristocratic men who spent a year or more traveling trough Europe. Up until the mid-1800 these visitors wrote hundreds of accounts on the Carnival of Venice. Guidebooks from this time claimed that more than 30,000 visitors would come to the city during the Carnevale.

Carnival in Venice

During the Austrian occupation the Carnival was banned. After the unification of Italy there was attempts to relaunch the fest but with the fascist take-over, and their ban on wearing masks in public, it never took off.

Today more than 1,000,000 people visit Venice during the carnival. A steady growth since it was reborn in the first years of 1980.

For a full schedule, and more information, click on the link: http://www.carnevale.venezia.it/en/calendar.html