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New Year’s Eve in Italy

La Festa di San Silvestro e Il Capodanno

Italians are known for their love of festivals and celebrations and New Year’s Eve is no exception. La Festa di San Silvestro is the holiday that is celebrated in Italy on December 31st and Il Capodanno is what is celebrated on January 1st. These holidays used to be a time for families to relax and celebrate quietly in their homes, but times have changed. Although, New Years is still a time for family in Italy, it is also a time to eat, dance, drink, and party with both family and friends.

Celebrations on New Year’s Eve or La Festa di San Silvestro are started out by, as with most Italian festivities, having a large dinner with family and friends. The star of this dinner, traditionally, is lentils, which symbolize money and good fortune for the coming year. The dinner will also usually include a cotechino, which is a large spiced sausage, and/or a zampone, which is a stuffed pig’s trotter, depending on how much pork everyone wants to eat. The pork is meant to symbolize the richness of life during the coming year. After dinner, people gather in the streets and public squares to dance, drink and await the coming of the New Year. At midnight, there are huge fireworks displays that last for hours. People tend to celebrate all night and traditionally do not retire to bed until sunrise.

Rome is the center of all New Years celebrations in Italy. Although there are similar festivities in Milan, Bologna, Palermo and Naples, what makes the celebrations in Rome most remarkable is the party that happens in Piazza del Popolo. Piazza del Popolo is the center of all celebrations in Rome, with an outdoor classical music concert being played throughout the entire evening, stopping only at midnight for the fireworks display. The fireworks display in Pizza del Popolo is the largest and most impressive in all of Italy and last for an hour, at which time the concert continues. The number of people that attend this party grows immensely every year, with people traveling from all over the world to experience New Year’s Eve in Rome. There are some faces that can be seen in Piazza del Popolo every year, including those of the Italian President and other important Italian political figures as well as several famous celebrities. No tickets are sold for this event, making it a first come first serve basis. Because of this, people camp out in the piazza for more than a week ahead of time in order to ensure a place for the celebrations.

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