Olivia proffit magazine

Venice’s annual celebration of masks, costumes and history opened Sunday with the Flight of the Angel ceremony in St. Mark’s Square. The

annual spectacle features a beauty pageant winner dressed in a Carnival costume who descends from the square’s iconic bell tower as she scatters rose petals into the adoring crowd

The hundreds-year-old event is a public party ahead of the Roman Catholic fasting month of Lent. Known as the world’s most delicious festival, wCarnival runs through Feb. 17, with thousands of participants expected to roam through Venice’s famous canals and narrow streets wearing detailed masks and costumes over the next few weeks. For those unable to pack elaborate costumes in their luggage, shops around the city rent or sell every detail needed to participate in the revelry.

Carnival was first held in Venice in the 11th Century, according to BBC News. Masks shielding the identity of party-goers have been part of the fun since the 13th century. Woman traditionally wore the columbine half-mask, covering only the eyes, nose and upper face, but it has since been adopted by men, too.

Costumes are only limited by the wearer’s imagination, with ancient Egyptian themes, jeweled accessories, creative headdresses and white masks often part of the style. To celebrate, the city hosts fanciful dinners, parades, masked balls and concerts culminating in the la maschera più bella, or the most beautiful mask, contest judged by a panel of international costume and fashion designers, according to PBS.

Security is a concern after several recent terrorist attacks across Europe. “This year Piazza San Marco will have a strict security and control,” city commissioner Sergio Pomponio told the Venice Times. “We have to give a peace of mind to everyone who visits our city and the events. On February 8 and 15 for example, there will be extra security and gates will be installed to the most popular sites.”

There are more than 50 official Carnival events in Venice. They are listed here. The city is often quiet during the week, even during Carnival. For the full experience, visit during the weekends.

Popular Carnival merchants include Ca’ Macanà (Calle delle Botteghe 3172, Dorsoduro 0039 041 277

The Carnival of Venice

PHOTO BY GOOGLE IMAGESModelas at the Carnival of Venice posing for an advertisement for the event

45 Travel Magazine | March 2015

Of all the pomp and pageantry Venice is famous for, none of its festivals has quite the allure of Carnival. Set

against the city’s fairytale backdrop, Carnival is the perfect marriage of age-old beauty and high drama. Enjoying its heyday in the 18th-century, the pre-Lent celebration quickly became a cover (quite literally) for dirty Doges and general transgression for the masses – before being snuffed out by that conquering killjoy Napoleon in 1797. It was also banned by Mussolini in the 1930s.

These days the event is facing a mightier foe: tourism. Resuscitated in the late 1970s, partly as a way of filling hotel rooms in the winter, Carnival today sees Venice at its most packed, preened and prohibitively expensive. The sentiment among many Venetians is that the 10-day programme of events is little more than a sponsored sell-out. Among the sponsors of this year’s themed Sensation of the Six Senses event are Swatch watches and Coca-Cola.

Giuseppina Giudice has lived in the district of San Marco all her life. “Venetians don’t dress up for Carnival after the age of 10,” she says. “All we see of Carnival is a river of strangers who flow into town to feel ‘Venetian’, and who fill it, buy a cheap made-in-China mask and leave with nothing but photographs of St Mark’s Square. We pray that we don’t get sick, go into labour or forget to buy any groceries because there’s no way to reach anywhere in less than an hour.”

Tired of the sponsored pantomime, which nets the city around €100m (£88.5m) each year, two social networking groups, 40XVenezia and Venessia.com have for the first time organised their own independently-funded Carnival party, to which visitors are invited. No pricey tickets or fancy ball gowns – just a good old Italian street party.

Claudio Scarpa, general manager of the Venetian Hotels Association, which was instrumental in getting Carnival off the ground again in the 70s, has given his backing to the street party: “The real Carnival was a way for Venetians to forget their hardships for 10


A woman wearing a venitican mask at the Carnival of Venice

days. Carnival now is for tourists. We need more events organised by locals, to help them [reclaim] their traditions.”

Well over 1,000 people are expected to join in the street party at a small piazza near the Rialto Bridge. Scarpa said that the strong euro and economic situation has meant that hotels are not as full as they usually are and that visitors can still find last-minute deals on veneziasi.it. He also said that lots of visitors will stay in Mestre, Vicenza and Treviso and get the train in for the day.

“Our Carnival celebration will be on the street, not in a palace. We’re leaving those parties to the nobility,” said Matteo Secchi of Venessia.com. “It is organised by Venetians for Venetians – and anyone else that wants to join us.”

The theme is “Festa Indiana, Veneziani sensa Riserve” (Venice without reserves). The publicity poster depicts the city’s famous winged lion – a symbol of freedom and power – dressed as a Native American.

The message to the administration is clear. “This is not Disneyland: people live here,” said Secchi. “We feel like Native American Indians – a dwindling populace confined to our ‘reservations’.”

For Venezia.com in particular, Festa Indiana is an opportunity to inform revellers from around the world about Venice’s population plight. The city is haemorrhaging residents at a rate of 1,000 a year. Today’s 60,029 residents are swamped by 21 million tourists and the fear is that once locals have gone, taking their traditions and culture with them, Venice could become little more than a theme park.

“Tourists are welcome to our party – the more we can inform them about the real Venice rather than the postcard Venice, the better,” said Secchi.

Leaflets, in English, will be handed out to tourists who can get masked for free by fellow Native Americans, once they arrive.

“I’ll give it a chance, although I’m not sure how local it will be. There are few real Venetians left and most of them will try to

PHOTO BY GOOGLE IMAGES



The Carnival of Venice

started in 1531

The festival lasts 12 days

The Carnival in Venice festival, which will be held this year from Jan. 31 to Feb. 17, is famous for the elaborate masks worn by

revelers, and now travelers can design their own at classes around the city.

The Hotel Bauer, for example, has teamed with the workshop Ca’Macana for two kinds of classes on select dates from Jan. 29 through Feb. 17. At the hourlong “ABC” course, students choose from 45 handmade papier-mâché masks and decorate one using materials such as brass pieces, Swarovski crystals and fabrics like lace (prices from 37 to 47 euros a person, or $43 to $54). The two-hour option involves decorating two masks and a lesson on their history (68 to 312 euros). Reservations are available by email ([email protected]).

IC Bellagio, a travel company based in Lake Como, offers a half-day of mask-making at a local artist’s studio on Feb. 14 as part of a larger one-night package to Carnival that includes V.I.P. admission for two to the St. Valentine’s Masquerade Ball at a private

palazzo; from $4,000 for two.The activity isn’t limited to Carnival season: The

Florence-based Weekend in Italy organizes a four-hour lesson any time of the year at an artist’s atelier over two days. Participants mold a clay mask on the first day and decorate it on the second; 75 to 500 euros.

The workshop Tragicomica offers a two-hour decorating class in which students paint a plain papier-mâché mask and have their pick of 50 kinds of material with which to adorn it, including feathers, sparkling beads and embroidery. Classes can be scheduled by emailing [email protected] and cost between 50 and 80 euros a person.

The tradition of masking goes back to 1268 when a law was passed to ban wearing masks and throw-ing perfumed eggs.

PHOTO BY GOOGLE IMAGESMasks | Masks ligned up in a shop in St.Peter’s Square right before the festival w


Masks have always been an essential component of the Venetian carnival. Carnival started as a time for celebration

where all social classes would mingle, and the fact of wearing a mask offered a unique possibility to remain anonymous, enjoying the advantages that such condition brought with it. In a society where social classes were very well defined and not intended to interact with each other, wearing a mask allowed to hide any form of identification based on origin, age, gender or religion.

While wearing a mask was a status symbol in the Venice of the 17th century, its use was subject to strict rules. It was, for example, forbidden to wear masks outside the carnival time (and other well-defined, specific times) or in sacred places, such as churches. A man could not dress himself as a woman, and prostitutes were not allowed to wear masks in public.

Originally Venetian masks were made of leather, porcelain or glass and had a practical or symbolic function. Today they are often made of hand-painted gesso or papier-mâché and decorated with feathers and gems. The main types of Venetian masks are the bauta, moretta, gnaga, medico della pesta, pantalone, arlechino, colombina (see further). Today, costumes worn at the Carnival vary to a certain degree from the original characters and often combine various elements of different origin.

The word bauta refers not just to a mask, but to the entire outfit, worn indifferently by men and women. The bauta was one of the most popular costumes of the Old Carnival, especially in the eighteenth century, and remained in vogue well into the modern Carnival.

The costume consists of a tricorn black hat, a veil and a tabarro, a mantle, which doubles over the shoulders, originally white, deep-blue or red in color, and decorated with frills and fringes. The mantle and veil worn with this costume made it easy to conceal arms, which forced the State of Venice to issue several decrees regulating the wearing of costumes. A very severe punishment was inflicted on any person violating these rules.

Usually worn by women, the moretta is an oval, strapless, velvet mask with no opening for the mouth, that is held in place by a button clenched between the teeth, reason why it is also called a ‘mute mask’ or servetta muta. Its name derives from the word moro which means ‘black’ in Venetian.

Originally, the Medico della peste was not a carnival mask, but an outfit invented by the French physician

Charles de Lorme, and worn as a protection against the plague. It is intrinsically linked to the history of Venice, as the city was hit by several plague outbreaks between 1361 and 1680. The most severe one, in 1630–31, recorded casualties of 46,000 people out of a population of 140,000. Some historians believe that the impact of the Italian plague on life and commerce was such that it ultimately resulted in the downfall of the Republic of Venice.

The Medico della peste costume consisted of an ankle length black overcoat and/or gown made from heavy fabric and usually waxed, protective gloves and a bird-like mask with a long beak. The distinctive mask was generally white with two round eyes-holes covered with glass. It had two small nose holes and acted as a kind of respirator (or primitive gas mask), filled with spices, pungent herbs, camphor and other strong aromatic substances, that supposedly purified the air plague victims had breathed. The idea was to keep away bad smells, as they were thought.

PHOTO BY GOOGLE IMAGESMirror | Glancing at the similairities of masks

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