Italian Easter - A Week-long Celebration

Spring is in bloom here in Italy, and before we start the countdown for summer holidays and warm weather, we can’t skip over one of the most important and celebrated holidays across the Boot: La Pasqua (Easter). Much like Christmas, Easter in Italy is more than a one-day affair–it is a week-long celebration filled with regional and country-wide traditions, religious parades, sacred recipes, sweet treats, and relaxing days spent with family and friends. Below, let’s look at what it looks like to celebrate La Pasqua in Italian fashion. 

A Week-long Celebration

Easter traditions are not just about Good Friday or Easter Sunday. Instead, the week leading up to Easter, known as Holy Week (La Settimana Santa), is filled with dynamic processions and rituals. Palm Sunday (La Domenica delle Palme) marks the start of Italy’s holiest week. It is celebrated with blessed olive branches given to church observers, generally symbolizing a sign of peace and renewal. These branches are often hung in houses or at door entryways until the following year, symbolizing peace and renewal. The biggest celebration of Palm Sunday is held at the Vatican in Saint Peter’s Square, where thousands of observers flock for outdoor mass. 

Holy Thursday often commences with special prayer services, masses, and processions in the evening, going into Good Friday. On Good Friday (Venerdì Santo), varying cities, towns, and regions reenact Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross) with elaborate and, at times, intensive processions. The day is generally observed solemnly and calmly, and many Italians either fast or refrain from eating meat, opting for vegetable-based or fish and seafood-based dishes. 

Pasqua

Easter Sunday starts with a Saturday evening or early morning mass held on Sunday. If mass is attended on Saturday, many bring hard-boiled eggs that will be blessed and eaten on Sunday. Children also decorate their hard-boiled eggs to be blessed, which is a fun and active tradition for Italian children. Across the country, churches hold special Sunday masses, and in some regions like Sicily or Abruzzo, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is reenacted, or processions are held to commemorate the resurrection. After, families gather to eat traditional foods with family and friends. 

Food & Desserts 

From region to region and city to city, Easter eating rituals and foods can vary. Still, a few must-have Easter dishes are served on Easter Sunday throughout the Boot. Generally, eggs are an essential ingredient and symbol in Easter recipes and gifts, symbolizing birth and renewal. Starting with sweet gifts, family members gift children larger-than-life chocolate and hallow-shaped eggs for the celebrations. Sadly, there is no Easter Bunny or Easter Bilby as you may see in places like Australia and America in Italy! 

For Easter lunch, hard-boiled eggs accompany sliced meats, cold cuts, and cheeses after days of meat restriction. Hard-boiled eggs are baked into specialty savory pies like Naples’s casatiello, filled with delicious cold cuts, cheeses, and eggs; pizza rustica from Basilicata, with similar ingredients but different preparation methods; or torta pasqualina from Liguria, made with savory greens, hard-boiled egg, and regional speciality cheese. Other dishes include lasagna, grilled lamb and, artichokes, or risotto. 

Traditional desserts on an Italian easter table typically include a colomba, a cake similar to Italian Christmas cake panettone, which is dove-shaped and crusted with almonds and sugary sprinkles. There is also pastiera, a Neapolitan cake that has become country-wide spread, which is an open-faced tart of cooked wheat, sweat ricotta, and flavored with orange zest or candied oranges. If you’re from Sicily, the beautifully decadent cassata– a sponge cake base filled with goat-ricotta and decorated with marzipan, a nearly sickening sweet white icing glaze, and finally topped with candied oranges or flowers.

Pasquetta 

There is a famous Italian expression, Pasqua con i tuoi, Pasquetta con chi vuoi, which means Easter with your parents, and Little Easter with whoever you want. So, what exactly is “Pasquetta” anyway? The day after Easter Sunday, also known as Easter Monday, Italians continue the Pasqua celebrations and take advantage of the long weekend on Monday, an Italian public holiday, to get together with friends. They refer to this day as Pasquetta. Traditionally, groups of friends and families get together and enjoy the warm weather and spring sunshine with barbeques, long and lazy days at a park, afternoon passeggiata, or a day at an open museum. It is a beautiful springtime tradition turned public holiday to wrap up the week-long festivities. 

Italian Easter Eggs - all come with a surprise inside

Author - Gabriela Proietti